Rain Man

I watched Rain Man at the movie theater in 1988, when I was in college. I was years away from marriage and children. I had never heard of autism beyond a few "freak show-styled" Savant stories that made me think, briefly, about the wonders of the human brain.

I never thought that it was really real -- real in the way that affects families, comes with facts, and creates lifetimes of challenges for people and their families.

I never thought it would affect me or anyone I knew.

I never thought I would live day in and day out with it.

I never thought I would love someone with it.

I never thought I would care.

I didn't expect that I would think twice about autism once I left the movie theater blinking against the sun, and wiping the popcorn grease down the legs of my pants, and heading home to start some studying.

Years later, after giving birth to two uncomplicated daughters ( there's an oxymoron if I ever heard one), I assumed my son, when they placed him in my arms, would grow up to do what boys do, from the beginning.

He would play Pee on Mom when I changed his diaper. He would turn Barbies into Guns, would toddle around pulling the cat's tail, and shadowing his daddy. He would grow up to play Tonka Trucks, Legos, Lincoln Logs, mud pies, and build forts and bike ramps.

I dreamed that I would nag him to wash behind his ears, pick up his socks, and put his skateboard away.

I thought I would spend time in the ER for stitches and broken bones.

I assumed he would play football, and soccer and baseball, and stroll down the school halls confident, funny, and a master of his words.

I assumed my son would protect his sisters, and pump iron, surf, and work on cars.

Not only do I remind him to wash behind his ears, I make "picture recipes" of the steps he needs to follow in order to take a shower, from closing the shower door, to using soap, to washing his hair with shampoo, not conditioner, to wet his hair and body before he uses the soap and shampoo and conditioner that so often confuse him. I tape this list, which is covered in clear plastic, to the outside of the shower, so he can follow it. If I don't switch the list regularly, or check on him, he still neglects several of the steps, most of the time. Taking a shower is actually pretty complicated, if you think about it. There is an order you must follow to take a shower to avoid flooding the bathroom, burning yourself, getting soap in your eyes, and finishing as dirty as you were when you started. And in our home, since five of us share one bathroom, there is a clean-up you must follow if you don't want to get nagged to death by two teenage girls.

Instead of protecting his sisters from lecherous guys, and otherwise rotten kids, he is protected by them, often fiercely. I remember calming a trembling 11 year old daughter who was begging to go to my son's school before the bell rang, so she could physically beat up the boy who had, the previous day, punched my son in the stomach and called him a "faggot."
She told me she would take a stint in Juvie any day for it. I believed she would have.

Although a love of team sports does not define all men, I know they make a lot of little boys very happy. I think it addresses something primal in them that relates to war play. I know it doesn't float everybody's boat, and I do not think less of a man or boy who does not play them or even enjoy them, they are a way for boys to move their bodies and stay fit. I believe this is important.
I don't expect that my son will ever play a team sport. His motor skills are terrible, for one thing, and he is largely unsuccessful when he even attempts to catch a ball. He also doesn't understand them. In order to understand a team sport, a person needs to be able to think of what others intentions are while thinking of their own short term goals, and short term and long term team goals:

If the ball is here, and I get it, I need to do this because if I don't than he might get it an be in a position to score, because last time, when we were in play here, he stole the ball and drove it straight in for a goal.

That's a lot to think about. I can't say my son will ever be able to do this.

Map Skills

My son always knows were we are. We drive around, and he will tell me about times were were on certain roads, sometimes many months before. He will sometimes say what we were talking about the last time we drove past there, or where were were on our way to going.

This amazes me. It's a cool skill. He never gets lost.


We live in the Southern tip of Florida. We were driving to Pennsylvania last summer, making a trip we had previously made six years before, when the boy was three and a half years old. He remembered a stretch of highway that we were on in Virginia and told us pretty much exactly where we were.

I have one question:

Why does God give crazy-good mapping skills to a body that may not ever even drive a car?

It must be to help other people out, or perhaps it is a way for him to keep order in an otherwise disorderly world. Maybe it's a precursor skill to something wonderful that he may one day do.

I never cease to be amazed in the present-tense. I'm prepared to be blown away by his gifts in the future. It's better to be expectant than to be bitter and confused.....

A Savage View of Autism or 84 Seconds of Ignorance

I haven't made a practice of posting on newsy topics the jabberwockies pounce on and regurgitate back to us, as I try to keep my mind pure (for proof of this, please see my post on wolf bait).

But being the mother of a child with autism, I can't let this one slide.

Michael Savage, talk show radio host, slightly less hot than Greta Van Susteren, whom I cannot abide, has opened his mouth and released a stream of radio waste so foul that he has offended every family on earth who is affected by Autism. You don't even have to have heard the radio clip to be offended, although a transcript of it is available in this post. Know this: simply the thought that he might exhale a molecule of carbon dioxide that could one day travel across the troposphere and be breathed in by a child with autism should be enough to offend all of us for years.

Here is a transcript of the clip:

"I'll tell you what autism is. In 99 percent of the cases, it's a brat who hasn't been told to cut the act out. That's what autism is. What do you mean they scream and they're silent? They don't have a father around to tell them, 'Don't act like a moron. You'll get nowhere in life. Stop acting like a putz. Straighten up. Act like a man. Don't sit there crying and screaming, idiot.'"

Michael Savage knows that “99 percent” of all cases of autism are misdiagnosed “brats.” Why have we not been listening to him? He does, after all, have an advanced degree in botany, and has many years of experience sitting all by himself in a little room, talking into a electrified stick. He should know.

Why have we all wasted our time on biomedical interventions, and examining videos of our children before and after vaccine injuries? Why have I spent hours crash coursing molecular biology in order to understand articles like Dr. Jill James about impaired transsulferation and oxidative stress, and the connections that autism has with midline defects (which my son was born with), gluten intolerance, and methylation deficiencies? Why have I not ignored the blood tests that showed elevated levels of mercury and arsenic in my son’s system? I would have saved a lot of money and a lot of time by just paddywhacking my little moron every time he acted autistic. If I did that I’d have a new kitchen and the girls could have taken ballet lessons instead of gotten dragged to endless sensory, speech, and occupational therapies, which after a few token sessions, insurance didn't even pay for.

Autism may be the DSM Flavor of the Decade, but I cannot believe that even Michael Savage believes that only 1 percent of people diagnosed with autism have a correct diagnosis. By now, he knows he spoke in error, but I don’t ask for or expect an apology from him, because real apologies require humility and come from the heart, and his chronically inflamed right to free speech keeps his heart hard. It will do no good to hope for an apology from such an unhappy, angry man. In fact I might suggest to him Jesus, as he needs more help than any human can give. He is giving decent conservatives a bad name, or, taken one shocking step further: if he represents conservatism, then I'm a liberal.

Dang. I never thought I'd say that. Anyone have Hillary's phone number? I should give my frosty little Socialist peep a ringle.

Asperger's and Humor

My son, who has Asperger's Syndrome, tries hard to tell jokes. I'm not sure it's a natural skill for people with Asperger's Syndrome, due to high incidence of pragmatic language problems they tend to have, but kids with Asperger's can do some unexpected things very, very well, so I don't want to generalize.

My son, however, is so bad at joke telling that at home, the actual "badness" of the jokes are often terribly funny.
Jokes he came up with on his own include these:
Your mamma's so greasy she eats bacon.
Your mamma's so fat, she's fatter than anyone I have ever seen (told to a boy with a very heavy mom).
Knock knock
Who's there?
The mailman
The mailman who?
I said, "The mailman." Stop it. You're trying to mess up my joke.
And he overheard Sarah Palin's speech last which had a joke in it that went like this:
What's the difference between a hockey mom and a pitt bull? Lipstick.
And this morning, over breakfast, he retold it like this:
What do you get when you cross a pitt bull and a hockey stick? A pip-stick.
We wanted to help him become better at telling jokes and fitting in socially, so we decided to teach him several jokes that he could memorize and just pull out of his hat when he was in a joke telling mood. Humor is an important social skill. So, we taught him several "yo mama" and knock knock jokes, and animal jokes, and had him practice telling them. It helps to have a repitoire. So what if he memorizes them like math formulas -- if he gets the setting and timing right ( no small feat in itself), then no one need know he memorized the joke?
This doesn't seem to be enough. So many jokes are about repetition and timing and nuance, all concepts that are elusive for my son, that, even though he has some decent joke ammunition, he falls flat in delivery.
During a conversation among adults at family party, the talk turned to a terrible police shooting in our community. Someone said the word "road" and since my son figured we were at a party......he piped in with: Why did the Chicken cross the road? With a punk rocker and a stapler!" Forgetting for a moment that the joke goes like this, "How did the punk rocker cross the road? Stapled to the back of the chicken," my son was so far off in reading the conversation well enough to understand how and when a joke would be appropriate, that most of the people at the party thought he was on another planet. My husband and I heard the trigger word ("road") and knew he was trying hard.
He is finding his way, however. A few months ago, he told his oldest sister that she looked like Chuck Norris (she does not). She laughed in surprise, and that was all he needed. He began to find ways to remind her of how and when she looked liked Chuck Norris. He does it several times a week, when she least expects it. Here's one:
"Dude. Sit up straight."
"Oh yeah? Well you look like chuck Norris."
And another, when the sister was babbling about something:
Mom, will you please tell Chuck Norris to be quiet?"
And today, just before dropping him off at school, his sister was in the front seat and she said, "Bye, Buddy."
And he said, while getting out of the car, "I just thought you should know ... your braids look like Chuck Norris."