Category Archives: Deep Thoughts

Although I try to avoid them (I don’t try too hard), some “big picture” thoughts about autism and this blog are bound to appear. I’ll categorize my deep thoughts here.

Vaccinations. I’m Ready for the Hate Mail

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A couple weeks ago, a message came across my Twitter feed (@findingmykid) telling parents of kids with autism not to blame themselves, because there is no single contributor to autism—no specific action they should or should not have undertaken. I was grateful for the reminder. I do have a tendency to blame myself for Martin’s autism. We had our kitchen rebuilt, clouding the apartment with construction dust, while I was pregnant. I let myself be bullied into induced labor, leading to epidural anesthetic, Martin’s loss of oxygen, and a C-section birth. I fed Martin foods I now know to trigger digestive difficulties. When we had new window guards installed, I put him to bed thinking the paint had dried, only to open the door three hours later and find his bedroom filled with fumes.

And—I chose to have Martin vaccinated. I started out wary of vaccines, from personal experience: I myself was fully vaccinated as a child, including against the measles, and yet at age 12 I contracted measles. Even the health department visited to find out why I’d caught the contagious and life-threatening disease. That experience has always given me pause about the efficacy of vaccination. So when Martin came along, I tried to educate myself. I attended two seminars (these billed themselves as neutral but turned out to be very pro-vaccination), perused some articles, and read the Dr. Sears book. In the end, after talking with Martin’s pediatrician, I decided to vaccinate Martin, but on the Dr. Sears “alternative” schedule, which skips some shots and spreads others apart. I reviewed the ingredients of available vaccines—they were non-vegan and generally disgusting—and requested them by brand, paying especial attention to aluminum content and to the combination of vaccines (I never allowed more than two) given on a single visit.

Still, I had misgivings, long before Martin was diagnosed with autism. I was uneasy with the idea of injecting, into my son, foreign matter including metals, Guinea pig embryo cells, cow blood serum. Are human bodies really designed to deal with that kind of intrusion, particularly by injection instead of ingestion? Each time Martin received a vaccination I left the doctor’s office feeling vaguely unsettled, even if I was unsure why.

It was mother’s instinct, I now suspect.

In 1998, Andrew Wakefield published a paper in The Lancet linking the MMR vaccine to digestive disorders associated with autism. The Lancet subsequently retracted that paper, and last April the BMJ published an article aimed at discrediting Wakefield’s study. That BMJ article was widely reported, and I recall a Facebook friend—damn you, social media—posting a link to one such report, with a tagline something like, “GET OVER IT, MORONS! VACCINES DIDN’T GIVE YOUR KIDS AUTISM!!!”

Yes, it was written in all-caps, the hallmark of any thoughtful sentiment.

I try not to take umbrage to Facebook posts. This one got to me. I think it would have got to me even without Martin’s condition. Facebook does not represent the best platform for discussing controversial ideas. (For example, have Facebook snippets persuaded anyone, ever, to change a political position?) Worse, the words, written by a mother of several neurotypicals, were inconsiderately harsh for someone not facing the realities of parenting a child on the spectrum.

More than the inappropriate forum or lack of empathy, though, was my belief that this Facebook friend was too cavalier.

I’m not going to say that I think vaccines “cause” autism. I’m sure many readers are horrified enough that I acknowledge a possible link between vaccines and ASD, at all; when I told a college friend that we were undertaking autism recovery, her first question was, “Are you going to be like that actress who went crazy and said vaccines made her son get autism?”

I’m not going crazy (and neither was Jenny McCarthy), and I’m not using the word “cause.” But after reading more, and from a wider variety of sources, I think this: Children who are prone to ASD, for whatever reason, share a sensitivity to certain food triggers, to electro-magnetic fields, to chemicals and heavy metals, and in general to foreign substances. And those children, when their sensitive systems are invaded with the gunk that comprises vaccines, react with increased neuro-divergence. Vaccines, therefore, in my entirely un-scientific opinion, do more harm than good to children who already have, or may develop, autism. I also think that some of the highly touted successes of vaccines may stem, in part if not primarily, from general advances in hygiene and health care; that is, bell curves appear to show that some diseases we vaccinate against have decreased at rates similar to diseases we don’t vaccinate against, because we’ve got better at caring for ourselves.

Be warned—here comes the lawyer in me. I am not advising anyone not to vaccinate his or her child, on the spectrum or otherwise. I would never give that advice. I am not a scientist. I freely admit that I do not fully understand all of what I read on topics like the effects of vaccines, and that I do not have the background to discern among competing sources of information. Thinking more globally, I have no reason to assert that, say, malaria vaccinations in Africa or polio vaccinations in South Asian are not a good thing. I have only my own conclusions, for me, for my family.

My law-school roommate asked me if she should stop giving her (neurotypical) children the fluoride tablets their dentist recommended. I answered honestly: I don’t know. I filter Martin’s water for fluoride. I think fluoride is bad for his condition. That’s not definitive. I may not even have the best or newest information. But from what I’ve got, no fluoride for Martin.

I regret, now, that I allowed Martin to be vaccinated. I particularly regret falling prey to the 2009 H1N1 hysteria and getting Martin that vaccine, because it was so wholly unnecessary, and because that was the single instance that I can remember in which my son seemed different after the injection than before. (I don’t have any specifics for that last comment; I can only say that Martin, who was not yet diagnosed on the spectrum, seemed pretty kooky for a day or two afterwards.) After consulting with Martin’s Track Two doctor and Martin’s pediatrician’s practice, Adrian and I have decided to forego any further vaccinations, at least for the time being. I feel far less threatened by hepatitis B than by further neurological damage to our son.

Quote of the Last 17 Days: Hope

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“Hope is one scary emotion.”

This quote comes not from someone famous—at least, not famous yet—but from my friend Alex. She is ten years younger than I am, trim, fit, beautiful, and because of a muscular affliction, often seated in a wheelchair. At the same time that Adrian and I are fighting to recover Martin, Alex is undergoing a costly experimental therapy aimed at regaining her mobility. “Hope is one scary emotion,” she told me in an e-mail and then continued:

I’ve been thinking a lot about hope lately, and my total fear of that particular feeling. Call me emotionally conservative or a cautious optimist (really cautious), but there is nothing more devastating (down on the floor crying with your coat over your head while you’re alone in the office) than feeling like you’ve put your hope in something that has failed. Imagining that your life can be different and then ending up in the same position that you were in before. I find that more times than not, feeling let down after I’ve dared to hope is what puts me in a near-catatonic state. . . . It’s been a long time since I even thought that I could be fixed.

With those words, Alex was speaking for both of us.

I have a conflicted relationship with hope. When Martin is doing well, hope creeps in, and invariably I wind up disappointed. Invariably, because when I’m hopeful, anything not perfect feels like a nasty, swollen raincloud hovering over my picnic table.

Take yesterday, for example. At the breakfast table Martin was drinking his apple-cider-vinegar beverage, and I noticed that he held the stainless-steel straw in the middle of his mouth, his little lips puckered around it. A big deal? A huge deal. Through his HANDLE therapy we’ve realized that Martin has midline issues. He does not like to reach his left hand to his right side, or vice-versa; he turns his head to watch action from the corner of his eyes; and he clenches straws with his molars, dangling them from the edge of his mouth. For months I have maneuvered his straw to his mouth’s middle and held it there while he slurped. Each time I released the straw, his tongue kicked it back to the molars.

Now here he was, unprompted, unassisted, puckering his lips around the straw.

I felt so hopeful. I seized Martin’s notebook—the one we use to communicate with his school—and wrote, “We’ve seen a lot of improvement in Martin lately.” Then I sent him off to the school bus.

I meant, of course, to prompt a similarly upbeat response from Martin’s teacher, something along the lines of, “So have we! He’s concentrating much better.” The moment Martin arrived home from school I pulled the notebook from his backpack and checked. Nothing. His teacher failed to take the bait, and that failure, unreasonably, crushed me. I assumed that she had seen my note, realized its purpose, and made a conscious decision not to respond, because she had observed no recent progress or improvement.

Martin’s teacher does not respond to everything I write in his notebook, especially when I give non-specific information (as opposed to, say, “Please note that Martin will be absent tomorrow for a doctor appointment”). Nor does she generally address his progress in the notebook; for that, we hold frequent in-person conferences. I can only imagine, also, that the daily grind in a classroom of special-needs pre-schoolers allows limited time for musing extensively, in writing, on “improvement.”

None of that mattered when I saw the empty notebook page yesterday. I had spent the day feeling hopeful, and my hope is so fragile that it just waits to be shattered.

So for the most part, I try to avoid hope. When I sense hope fluttering through my chest, I try to diminish it, by focusing on Martin’s shortcomings and areas without recent improvement.

And therein lies the conflict. I dodge hope because it invites an unbearable parade of emotional highs and lows. On the other hand, I can’t continue this path without hope in Martin’s recovery. Hope is sustenance, even if I partake only when Martin’s progress is undeniable.

Today, unlike yesterday, and even though that straw again was in the middle of Martin’s mouth at breakfast, I will not allow myself to feel hopeful about Martin’s recovery in any present or immediate sense. Instead, I will hope for my friend Alex, and allow her to hope for us.

When hope becomes an enemy, at least we have our friends.

Martin’s Bundle: This Symptom, and Not That Symptom

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After church services this morning, a younger member of the congregation approached me with a question. His psychology class is covering a unit on autism. They’ve learned about autism-related behaviors like not wanting to be touched, making no eye contact, and lacking affection. If Martin has autism, then why is it that, every time this young man sees us, Martin is snuggling on my lap or hugging me or smiling at people he knows?

I gave him the explanation, as far as I understand autism (which, I admit, is not very far). Autism is defined not by a root cause, but by symptoms, and the disorder can encompass myriad symptoms. Not wanting to be touched is one such symptom. So are, for example, taste and texture issues with food, or self-stimulating behaviors arising from sensory overload. A child on the spectrum may exhibit all these symptoms, or any group of them—what I like to call any “bundle” of symptoms.

Martin’s primary symptoms, I explained, are insufficient joint attention—he isn’t always interested in what others around him are doing, even if the others around him are Mommy and Daddy, and they’re pointing to pictures in front of his face—, language delay, inconstant eye contact, and mild self-stimulation.

Does Martin get upset if things are not the same every time he encounters them? the young congregant asked.

He does, in weird ways, I responded. If we drive to Brooklyn, he insists on taking the Brooklyn Bridge. The Manhattan Bridge and Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel upset him. And altering our plans sometimes prompts a tantrum. Adrian and I put a lot of effort into making sure Martin understands our schedule for any given day (or even hour), and that we stick to whatever we describe. Also, when Martin finds himself in an unfamiliar situation, or overwhelmed, he tries to make order with whatever he has at hand; on our trip to South America last week, in the garden of a busy household with cousins scampering left and right, Martin sat beneath a blooming tree, gathered strobiles, and stacked them side-by-side, into a toy speedboat, repeatedly. Order.

Even as I described those symptoms, the after-church conversation reminded me of a topic Adrian and I discuss often, namely, just how lucky we are in terms of Martin’s particular bundle. Martin eats more or less anything I serve him, facilitating his ultra-restricted diet. He wears any fabric. He displays strong affection for me, Adrian, Samara, his babysitters, his grandparents, even our friends and neighbors and extended families. Honestly, I think I would have great difficulty parenting a child who did not demonstrate his love. I am plenty tested by our cats, with their stand-off-ish nature, and that I can chalk up to their not being human. (In the event that you, amazing reader, parent a child who does not reciprocate affection, please add that to the list of many reasons why I salute you.)

The after-church conversation also made me consider this reality: Martin stands out less than he used to. Today, for the first time, he remained in his seat for the entire church service. Eight months ago he would have gone crawling under the chairs, seeking a snug and secure spot. One month ago he would at least have flopped onto the floor, or wandered away. Any person who is acquainted with children must perceive Martin’s language delay, or wonder about his tendency to ignore his name. Of course they must. But more and more I wonder whether the label autism still comes to mind when strangers meet Martin.

I left church today feeling fortunate.

Fortunate based on Martin’s particular “bundle,” and fortunate because we have seen even that bundle begin to splinter.

An Aimless Post, Most of Which I Wrote on an Airplane

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Recovery requires a sea change, from autistic behavior to neurotypical, that as far as I can tell takes years under the best circumstances. There will be no single morning when Martin will wake up perceptibly different from the night before. True, we notice gradual alterations: moments when I remember some behavior Martin used to have that I haven’t witnessed in weeks; instances when Martin surprises us with a new skill, albeit one that won’t reappear again for months; once-daunting tasks, like clearing airport security, that Martin manages now with ease. And there are physical signs, such as sleeping and scratching.

But for the most part Adrian and I operate on vague notions, such as whether the day passed easily, or how Martin “seemed,” or whether he carried himself like other kids.

Three nights ago we left Martin with my mother-in-law, who was traveling with us, and had a dinner date. We talked about Martin, as usual, and we agreed that he does seem better. Neither of us had any precise reason. I mentioned that Martin appears steadier on his feet and more organized in his movement; Adrian brought up eye contact. No one denied that Martin has thrown some tantrums this week, or that his language remains so-so. Yet our notion was one of improvement. Indeed, Adrian called this “in terms of recovery, the best week [Adrian has] seen in months.”

By yesterday Martin was exhausted, and sick of traveling, on our last in Argentina before the overnight flight back to New York. He was fussy and unreasonable. He insisted on being carried any distance longer than four feet. Still, he brought us joy. We had him dressed in a miniature Leo Messi jersey, which caused our lunchtime waiter to like him immediately. (The Messi-jersey trick, I’ve determined, works on nearly any Argentine. We’ve enjoyed repeated calls of “¡Qué precioso!” and “¡Hay viene el Lionelcito!”) The waiter doted on Martin, who smiled and ate with his fork like a big boy. After the check was settled, the waiter held out his hand to Martin and said, “¡Ciao, amigo!” Martin grasped the offered hand, made firm eye contact with the waiter, and replied solemnly, “Ciao.” It was another of those like-any-kid interactions.

Where am I going with this post? I don’t really know, as I don’t truly know where we’re headed with recovery. I guess I want to say that things are looking up.

But it never pays to get ahead of myself. That’s a recipe for heartache.

The A-ha Moment: Part Two

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(This is the second in a series of posts, begun here last month.)

“There’s something we’re missing,” I said to Adrian after I read the article about a six-year-old boy whose autism had disappeared. “There’s something more we can do.”

I was ready to do whatever it took, to make any sacrifice or pay any price, to get back the bright and engaged boy I knew Martin could be. But I had no idea how, or which direction to turn.

After Martin was diagnosed, Adrian and I had got, from friends and family members, recommendations of people we “really should talk to.” I’d never followed up; I tend to be a go-it-alone kind of gal, and didn’t see myself finding solace in an “autism parent support group,” the path I thought I’d be walking if I started reaching out. Now, feeling lost, I decided to exploit some of those contacts.

My first call was to the wife of a once-removed business contact of Adrian. Neither Adrian nor I had ever met this woman, or her husband, who live in another city. I’ll call her Annie.

Annie answered the phone at the time we’d arranged by email, and I explained the situation: Martin’s diagnosis, the behavioral therapy, my frustration about not doing enough.

“I’m glad you contacted me,” Annie responded. “My son is nine years old, and recovered from autism.”

Those words. He’s recovered?

“Yes, completely.”

I grabbed a pen and notepad. “Tell me more?”

Annie, God bless her, spent a full hour on the phone. She had “dropped out of life” for four years, she said, in order to recover her son through every medical, holistic, traditional, and behavioral approach she could find. It had been hard work, especially knowing whom to trust and what to try. In the beginning she’d been told that only behavioral therapy was available. She hadn’t considered biomedical recovery until a friend got her interested in the topic. Once they started biomedical recovery, the difference was amazing. The traditional doctors told her the process would never work. She ignored them. Her only standard became whether a treatment might hurt her son.

(As I’m writing this, from my scrawl on that yellow notepad, ten months after the conversation, I hear in Annie’s words exactly what I would tell a parent if one were to call me today.)

Annie told me about RDI therapy instead of ABA. (She had pulled her son out of traditional one-on-one ABA therapy, a decision I also made some months later.) She told me about the Yasko profile, Generation Rescue, genetic mutations, hormone treatments, available therapies. My head was spinning. The key, Annie concluded, was to find a doctor with strong traditional medical strengths who nonetheless would ride the cutting edge of new treatments. She gave me the name of a doctor halfway across the country, an associate of the excellent Track Two doctor we now use for Martin.

I hung up the phone in a different place than I’d been an hour earlier. I spent the afternoon chasing down websites and phone numbers. I printed pages and pages. By the time Adrian arrived home that evening, I had a full presentation prepared for him.

I began with, “This is what we’re going to do.”

Quote of the Last . . . Seriously, Has It Been That Long?

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“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 read comments left on the blog, sent to FindingMyKid@yahoo.com, and tweeted to @FindingMyKid, and as acquaintances have told me how they are using the blog, that second objective has expanded. I still want to serve families on the ASD recovery journey. But I’m realizing that most every parent is shepherding some journey. There are various disorders (ADHD, food allergies, &c.) apparently stemming, at least in part, from similar causes as autism. And beyond those disorders lie issue upon issue, from bullying to low self-esteem to eating disorders, layered into our kids.

We as parents are just trying to do the best we can, right? We’re covering every base when it comes to our children fulfilling their potential, while at the same time we’re building families and finding balance in our own lives.

It’s no easy task. I hope my little corner of the internet is giving voice to the enormity of parenthood.

You may not have a child with ASD, or a child on this particular recovery path. If what I say resonates with you, it’s because you know troubles of your own. It’s because we’re parents.

Pondering the Destination

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How am I going to know if Martin recovers?

Martin’s autism, for me, is defined by negatives. He doesn’t ask questions. He doesn’t respond to his name. He doesn’t pay attention. He doesn’t use pronouns. He doesn’t have strong fine motor skills.

I wonder how neurotypicality will be defined. If I remove the “n’t” from each of those sentences, is Martin recovered? Or will he need to achieve some level of “can do” before we call him neurotypical?

The determination will be easiest if I can define recovery be negatives, too, by unusual behaviors discontinuing. For example, I’m writing this at the airport, waiting for a flight. Martin is seated in the chair next to me, playing with a toy train. He is not crawling under the row of seats trying to wedge himself into the smallest, most secure crevice available (which he used to do). At the security checkpoint he did not refuse to hold my hand and did not bolt. He has not had a potty accident all morning.

On the other hand, he did sort of freak out and refuse to wash his hands when the bathroom had only hot-air dryers, no paper towels. (I had some paper towels in our travel backpack. Meltdown averted.) What if he had not panicked at the thought of trying the hot-air dryer? Then would this be a neurotypical trip to the airport? Probably not. He still can’t ask questions or speak very clearly.

So I suppose our journey will end with a magic combination, when the peculiar behaviors cease and Martin attains skills that rival an average neurotypical peer’s.

Which I also suppose means our journey may never end. I mean, I engage in peculiar behaviors. (As far as I know, it is not normal that I refuse to start the washing machine until I’ve located each of our four cats, to make sure none is in the washer. Even though I’ve just checked the washer and confirmed that no cats are inside. Twice.) Moreover, I lack any sense of direction, can’t draw more than a stick figure, and couldn’t sing on key to save my life. So I would say I can’t find a new location, illustrate, or sing as well as an average peer, neurotypical or otherwise. Come to think of it, despite being athletic, I can’t even play basketball. Just not a skill I have.

My “can do” is not up to snuff. Looks like I need a recovery journey, too.

[Sigh.]

Friendships

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When Martin has a good day, I allow myself some daydreaming about life once he recovers.

So far, today has not been great. But yesterday was pretty good, and I did some daydreaming. I asked myself this: What is my No. 1 goal? If I could pick one facet of recovery wherein we succeed without qualification, what would it be?

Easy answer: friendships.

In post after post, I’ve extolled my husband, Adrian. We are (quoting a pal) the Disturbingly Happy Couple, co-participants in a head-butting, growling, grappling marriage of equal parts challenge and laughter. Without Adrian, I would, no doubt, lack the strength to recover Martin.

But there is another achievement of my adult life that I value just as much as my marriage: the ability to build and maintain friendships.

I didn’t have close friends growing up. That is to say, until I was in my 20’s I kept myself apart from others. I can perceive now that I had too little self-esteem as a young person, and that I masked that shortcoming with too much self-confidence—meaning that I ignored the needs of my peers and expected them to care for mine, without reciprocity. I had acquaintances, and “friends” in the sense of people with whom I interacted socially, but I never opened up to anyone. And if anyone tried to open up to me, I shut down.

As an adult, fortunately, I got better at internalizing humility in a way that led to more genuine relationships. It was a painstaking process, learning to unlock feelings and to expose my own weaknesses, and especially, to empathize. Inviting others out “just to talk.” Listening. Returning phone calls, writing thank-you notes, keeping track of what was going on in homes besides my own.

Closer friendships—I realize that this probably isn’t news to anyone but me—improved my life immeasurably. Today I marvel at the bone-headedness of self-isolation.

Adrian and I do RDI therapy with Martin. Last spring we watched a five-hour video explaining how RDI works. The first couple hours made for pretty awful viewing; a doctor enumerated the neurological bases for autism, and how those behaviors manifest themselves behaviorally. Dismal statistics appeared on-screen, noting that even the highest-functioning ASD adults, traditionally treated, do not live independently or enjoy significant peer relationships. Then the doctor appeared and reiterated that, unless their course of development is altered, high-functioning children with autism will not learn to make and keep friends. They will never have significant peer relationships.

I was mortified.

Another parent once told me, about her eleven-year-old son on the spectrum, “He doesn’t have friends except for one. But if he doesn’t care, why should I?”

I think she must be wrong. I think her son must care.

Martin will care if he has friends. And so will I, always.

Memories. Shoot, Now I’m Glad I Wrote Them Down

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Before I started blogging in August, I kept a computer “journal” of sorts, wherein I jotted notes of how we were doing, in case I ever did want to start documenting the process. I haven’t opened that file since early August. This morning, however, I dug out the relevant USB storage device to search for a few paragraphs I remember drafting on the topic of maintaining friendships. (Look for that post for later in the week.)

My readers know I’ve been frustrated lately, feeling stuck. Reading what I wrote earlier this year provides perspective. These entries, from my own journal, stunned me:

4/20/11. Parent interview at [Big Imposing Hospital]. Martin’s scores range from 1st percentile fine motor skills to 97th percentile school readiness (letters, numbers).

4/25/11. Martin is not as good as he was over the weekend. He’s a little out of it. In the late afternoon, after Samara leaves, he becomes fussy, whiny, irritable. Finally, just before 6:00 pm he has massive foul diarrhea, and I recall that he has not pooped since Saturday morning.

4/26/11. Martin isn’t having a great day. No desire to work with [his ABA therapist]. [His PT] calls him “weak.”

4/30/11. In the mail come [the Track Two doctor’s] notes from our call. Among them is written, “Mother getting discouraged.” I’ve got to do a better job with keeping upbeat.

5/1/11. Take Martin to church with chips, books, toys. He hides under my maxi-dress, and his seltzer with kombucha squirts all over newcomer in front of us. Throws a tantrum leaving church. [A friend] patiently holds my purse and his bags as I strap screaming child into car. Then I shut door and—silence. He’s locked inside. [My friend] nods in salute to the silence and hugs me.

5/2/11. Martin is hot in defiance phase. Hates every change. Doesn’t know what he wants. Refuses even what he loves, like coconut oil.

5/3/11. At 7:40 pm (during bedtime) he unloads three days’ worth of poop, mostly undigested food. I consider the irony of seeing my carefully prepared concoctions emerge from the other end in more or less the same form.

5/6/11. Through the grapevine I hear about a typically developing playmate of Martin who has not succeeded in getting a pre-school placement for next fall. She will stay at the New York Kids’ Club instead. I feel some schadenfreude creeping in. I tell myself that under the circumstances, schadenfreude does not make me a bad person. At least, not that much.

5/9/11. Horrible bedtime. Martin is so worked up, and he fell asleep on the school bus coming home. For the first time in weeks I have to restrain him. He struggles and cries. I miss a business call at 8:00 pm.

6/6/11. A disaster of a day. Martin is awake since 1:40 a.m. He is miserable, whining, crying all day. [His babysitter] cannot get him to nap. Nor does he sleep even in the school bus. I am running on two hours’ sleep. Call with Kathleen is unfocused, wandering. I express doubts. I wonder if we’re making progress. School report says Martin was in “more of a daze than usual” during circle time.

It’s November now. Martin sleeps, eats, and poops well. He engages in only limited self-stimming behavior, such as running back and forth. He walks heel-to-toe. He possesses sufficient body control and proprioceptive awareness that he rarely stumbles. My big complaints these days are continued poor attention, especially in group settings; echolalia and language delay, including the inability to ask questions; and fussiness when we deviate from plans or Martin doesn’t get what he wants.

I’m finding it helpful to recall the days when I had to worry about screaming fits, inability to sleep or digest food, and a craving for secure space that had Martin hiding under my dress.

I’m finding it very helpful.

Reinforcements Arrive

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Last night, for dinner, Martin ate ginger-spiced beef with squash and broccoli sprouts, wrapped in steamed Napa cabbage and topped with coconut-cilantro sauce.

This morning, for breakfast, he enjoyed beef-vegetable-and-duck-egg hash.

Have I miraculously learned to cook meat-based delicacies?

No. The limits of my skill remain roasting a duck.

Instead, Martin’s personal chef has arrived.

If I have to have a son with autism, Providence has intervened to give me as much help as possible. Martin’s ASD was discovered early because an old friend is an early-intervention practitioner who was willing to travel to New York City and observe him. When our family decided to undertake a biomedical recovery process, all the pieces fell into place to allow a full, comprehensive approach. My mother is retired and loves to bake Martin’s special crackers, muffins, and cookies.

Now that we’ve decided to feed Martin meat products, and I’ve admitted that I know nothing about preparing and cooking meats, another old friend has stepped in—a chef! My high-school friend Coleen is a chef at a private club that closes for several months during the winter. After reading my sad attempts to conjure meat dishes, Coleen contacted me and volunteered spend some of that off-time with us, cooking for Martin and teaching me to do the same. She arrived on Wednesday, for two weeks, and has taken over my kitchen already. She’s in there now, putting together Martin’s dinner. Even Adrian came home to a fresh, gourmet meal yesterday. The boys don’t know what’s hit them.

I’ve admitted that I am a Type-A personality. In many respects, Martin’s ASD (and especially the recovery process) has led me to buckle down and seize control of everything—food, environment, sleep, travel, clothing, medical care, vaccinations.

On the other hand, I’ve also taken actions that come less naturally to me. I’ve started listening to more non-mainstream sources. I’ve done limited on-line networking. Most prominently, I’ve stopped trying to travel this road alone, and I’ve accepted help. I’m happy to have it.

I’m going to wander into the kitchen and see what’s cooking.