In the short but intense four years of high school, few events come close to the social significance and lasting memories of junior prom. It is pageantry, fantasy, a rite of passage, all those important things.

Kyra Uramoto didn’t want her brother to miss his prom. Alex, a 17-year-old Kalani High School student who has autism, doesn’t really care about such things, but Kyra thought he might have fun if she took him.

“I thought it would be something nice for him to do. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be able to go,” she said.

Kyra, a first-year molecular and cell biology major at University of California, Berkeley, was home from spring break last week — perfect timing for Kalani’s prom March 26.

Alex is nonverbal, though he understands speech and can communicate using an iPad app called Proloquo, which pairs pictures with words to form sentences. But his connection with his sister is special.

“I know him so well, so I can kind of tell if he’s not interested in things,” Kyra said. At prom, she talked to him, described what was going on, asked him questions like what he wanted to eat, even though he doesn’t answer. “It’s all just guessing, but if he doesn’t like it, he just won’t eat it,” she said.

Though their parents are doctors — Greg Uramoto is a pediatrician, Kristine Uramoto is a rheumatologist — they say much of what they’ve learned about raising a child with autism came from other families.

“For me, one of my patients had a child with autism,” Kristine said. “She became a mentor to me. We met outside of the office and she walked me through the process of getting what we needed for Alex.”

The Uramoto family is now quick to reach out to families of children who are newly diagnosed. There are so many questions, and no one is as knowledgeable as a family who has been through it.

Kyra, a 2016 Punahou graduate, started a Sibling Support Group when she was in high school, inviting others like herself — siblings of children with intellectual disabilities — to share stories and advice.

One of the things group members discussed most often was what to say when their sibling displays odd behavior or has a meltdown in public.

“Usually, I gently explain, ‘Oh, he has autism,’” Kyra said. “But if someone is being deliberately mean to him — and it happens a lot — I let them know that it’s not OK to say things like that.”

At prom, there were no meltdowns. The siblings ate dinner and took pictures, but left when the dancing started. Kyra sensed that the music would be too loud for her brother’s sensitivities and thought it would be a good time to leave. By general standards, it wasn’t the sort of prom experience most students might expect, but it was good.

“He actually enjoyed it,” Kyra said. “There was an ice cream bar and he loves ice cream, so he really liked that.”

There were ribbons decorating the chairs, and Alex enjoyed playing with those. He also liked picking apart his maile lei. Autism is a social disorder, and at the most important social event in high school, Alex found his own fun.

“He’s generally a happy person,” Kyra said.

Kyra’s advice for others wanting to support a friend or sibling on the autism spectrum is this:

“It’s their prom. Make sure you do the things that they like. Like for Alex, it was the ice cream bar.”