“If what I say resonates with you, it is merely because we are both branches on the same tree.”
—William Butler Yeats

I started this blog with a two-fold objective: (1) keeping relatives and friends current on Martin’s progress, and (2) providing a resource to other families who are undertaking, or considering, biomedical ASD recovery.

As I’ve mentioned, Adrian and I have chosen to reveal Martin’s autism only on a limited basis. We tell intimate friends and confidants, and also other parents with children around Martin’s age, who can easily spot the differences in his development.

There are a few exceptions, mostly persons who ended up somehow in the “need to know” circle or who found out coincidentally. My hairdresser, whom I visit four or five times a year, fits this latter category. I don’t even remember how anymore—I may have accidentally given the real reason when I had to move a hair appointment for one of Martin’s therapy sessions—but she knows that Martin gets special attention for developmental delays. Not specifically autism. “Developmental delays.”

She also has recently had a child herself, a baby boy.

I got my hair cut this week. The hairdresser and I chatted superficially. After a while she asked after Martin. I said he’s in a new school, and it’s going well, and he’s so big, and yes, he’s getting better. The usual. I concluded quickly and tried to push the conversation toward Will and Jada Pinkett Smith’s home design choices, which were featured in the Architectural Digest in my lap.

“It’s heinous,” my hairdresser responded as I pointed to Mrs. Smith’s meditation room. “How often do you think they use that room?” Then she lowered her voice and leaned toward me. “So, like, how did you figure it out? I mean, what should I be looking for?”

I stiffened. “Oh, just, you know.” Pause. “Just—you know. We noticed that he couldn’t do things that other kids could. He repeated what we said, instead of making up new sentences. Stuff like that. Look, there’s a cat in the meditation room.”

“So when did you start seeing he was different? Was it right away?” She kept angling for information, for the harbinger of whether her son too would bear the curse of “developmental delay.”

I have no desire, none at all, to serve as neurotypicality guidepost or cautionary tale. I am hoping that my readers take encouragement from Martin’s progress toward recovery. As to the other end of this journey, however—as to our discovery of Martin’s ASD and its subsequent diagnosis—I do not want our experience exploited as example. I can’t fully explain why this is the case. Indeed, before we knew Martin had any disorder, I too sought guidance. I can remember asking my mother, regarding a severely autistic boy she knows, what the signs were and when his parents observed them. I worried about autism. Parents today worry about autism.

I think I’ve become jealous of those who have only the worry, not the reality. Now that Adrian and I belong to the subset of parents with autistic children, I’m more interested in helping those in the same boat, not in reassuring others that they won’t also be set adrift.

I suppose that’s not very nice of me.

But what would I tell a new parent, anyway? To get to three or four years old, and then stop worrying? Even I, with one three-year-old child, know parenthood doesn’t work that way. As soon as the fear of autism passes, another demon waits to take its place. I have a friend whose pleasant, engaging brother showed no signs of mental illness until his freshman year at a prestigious university, then plunged headlong into debilitating schizophrenia. I have an acquaintance whose son began at age nine to exhibit symptoms of depression and, despite every intervention and the unrelenting love of his family, took his own life as a teenager. There is no safety point. So why bother trying to relax?

Or conversely, why bother worrying?

Until you have to.

After fumbling for a minute or two, I told my hairdresser, “Oh, you’ll figure it out. You’ll be able to tell if anything’s not quite right. Don’t worry.”

Then I held my magazine aloft and simply insisted she agree that the outside of Will and Jada’s house was as horrendous as the inside.

That was a much easier point to sell.

Social networking must be a godsend to support-group people.

I’m not a support-group person. I don’t belong to any gathering of autism parents. I have very limited “community” when it comes to dealing with Martin’s issues. Social networking thus far has accomplished approximately nothing to assist with his recovery.

Instead—and I’ll admit that this is my own fault, as I seem wholly unable just to shut the darn Facebook off—what social networking does, mostly, is make me feel bad.

Don’t get me wrong. I love to read friends’ posts about their children doing sweet, standard kid stuff. Check out Billy’s first day of kindergarten! Sadie scored a soccer goal! Maria is nervous for the sixth-grade dance! Nothing threatening there.

What I dread are the conscientiously self-effacing triumphs of the über-mom. She’s usually a figure from my distant history whom I know today only on-line. A mom whose fashionable kids have highfalutin names, speak in clever quips, and misbehave only in adorable ways. A mom who prepares elaborate meals not because a recovery regimen demands it, but because once her little Aristotle discovered wasabi-infused ginger puree over sashimi skewers and pea cakes, she just had to make them weekly. A mom with perfect hair who doesn’t have to deal. With. Autism. (This is an amalgam. The über-mom is not one. She’s many. And she’s all over my Facebook page.)

I don’t know why posts about perfect kids bother me so much. Resentment? Bitterness? Deep down I know that if über-mom’s life were really so great, she wouldn’t be spending so much time on Facebook posting about how great life is. But when I’m worried about Martin, I don’t live deep down. I’m on the surface, where every wunderkind update feels like a dig against me and mine.

Before Martin’s diagnosis, I had two big experiences, one good and one bad, using a social network to address a child-rearing issue. The good experience arose in the morass of Martin’s early sleeping trouble. Adrian was away on business. At 9:30 pm I had just got Martin back to sleep for the third time. In frustration I signed onto Facebook and posted what was happening. Within half an hour, at least a dozen other parents (in this case, actual friends, people I know, not just disembodied Facebook presences from past life) responded with empathy, common experiences, and possible solutions. Already by the time Martin woke again, around 10:20 pm, I was feeling more confident, and accompanied by my misery’s company.

The bad experience arose in the context of a local “mothers’ group” I joined when Martin was born. This group met from time to time for coffee or to go walking, which I had done once or twice. (It felt awkward trying to become friends with other women based only on the coincidence of giving birth during the same season.) The group’s main function was on-line communication, stuff like babysitter wages and mommy-and-me classes. Around the time that our kids were moving to solid foods, I posted an inquiry about whether the group included any other vegan or vegetarian families. If so, I said, I’d like to get together to talk about nutrition and menus, and maybe to let the kids play so Martin wouldn’t think he was the only vegetarian in town. (I have vegetarian friends, but none with children who live in New York City.) The group’s moderator responded immediately and vehemently. She demanded to know why I was trying to split the mothers’ group along dietary lines. Did I think I was better than mothers who let their children eat meat? Did I have a problem with her giving her son chicken? What was next—would I be letting Martin play only with children whose parents are Democrats? I removed my post, befuddled, wondering how I’d managed to provoke such a reaction, and also why everyone assumes vegetarians are Democrats.

If I could get a cyber-beating for trying to connect with vegetarians, heaven only knows the peril of raising ASD recovery in a social-networking context. After seven weeks of blogging, already I can identify myriad ideas of mine that will cause some folks to bristle. Let’s start with my basic premise: that recovery from autism is possible. On the Twitter feed associated with this blog (@findingmykid), I follow at least one account with precisely the opposite take: that biomedical treatment of autism is “quackery.” And frankly, I have respect for that position. There are days when I myself just can’t believe that the mainstream medical community is suppressing the means to recovery from a condition that affects one in every 70 American boys. By now I’ve talked to enough parents who recovered their children to keep me going, but barely. (Quack away, my friends—it’s just enough to keep the skepticism at bay.)

So anyway, I’m not social networking. I’m blogging. The site is open for comments (I’ll “approve” any comment that is neither spam nor profanity-laced), and I expect to receive some that express disagreement. I hope to, even; that’s what makes a forum. Still, blogging feels less vulnerable than social networking. Maybe it’s because knowing that I’m expressing controversial views prepares me for backlash. Maybe it’s because I’m anonymous. Maybe it’s just because the blog is mine, as if I’m in control.

As if I’m in control of anything at all.

This week Adrian and I attended orientation at Martin’s new school. Martin is identified as a “preschooler with a disability,” so he has a placement through the Committee on Special Preschool Education (CPSE), which is a public program. The school itself, however, is largely privately funded, part of a national network serving learning-disabled people. It is a magnificent facility for three-to-five-year-olds, well staffed and boasting amenities like sensory gymnasiums and a music room. Adrian and I feel so grateful that Martin has been offered a spot there, starting September 7.

The parents at the orientation seemed, almost stereotypically, Manhattan-ish. Expensively dressed. Talking a lot and coming off as pushy, in a positive, I’m-going-to-bat-for-my-kid kind of way. I glanced around the room and saw dozens of couples who looked—how can I put this?—like Adrian and I.

But as soon as they started asking questions, it was evident that these parents are in a different situation than the playground moms I know from my neighborhood. “My son can’t chew. He can only swallow purées,” one parent said. “What measures do you have in place to prevent him from grabbing another child’s food as a choking hazard?” Another said, “My daughter is just learning to walk. Who will help her to the front of the bus?” Twice during the orientation I felt myself near tears. Maybe the cause was despair that Martin is classified with such children. Or relief that his condition is mild by comparison. Or being confronted by the reality that no matter how much we polish our image, imperfection finds us. I’m still not sure.

Afterward, Adrian and I walked to a nearby diner. I recognized another couple who had been at the orientation, now seated at a booth across from ours. They recognized us, likewise, so we introduced ourselves and said our son, Martin, would be starting this fall as a three-year-old. Their son, too! they said. His name is Warren, and they are happy to have found such a wonderful program for him.

With that information out, we all stopped talking and smiled at each other.

I wanted to ask, What’s wrong with Warren? What are you in for? I didn’t, of course.

Warren’s dad broke the silence with a joke about needing pancakes to decompress from all the information we’d received at orientation. We laughed and returned to our own booth.

I don’t yet know the social code of this realm we have entered, don’t know what I can and cannot ask, what details are mine to gather or which of Martin’s secrets are mine to give. In fact, other than over the internet or by phone, I know almost no one whose child is disabled (learning or otherwise). I may be avoiding too much.