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How to Survive Autism
A Been-there, Done-that Guide
for Parents By Barbara Fischkin
for Parents
The worst day of my life was when my husband and I accepted the diagnosis. We drove away from the Yale Child Clinic in tears. Our 5-year-old son, Daniel, had Child Disintegrative Disorder, the doctors said, a rare but very real form of autism, characterized by severe regression. Compared to the prognosis, hell sounded like a picnic.
No comeback for this kid, they said. No speech. No toilet training. Institutionalization by age 10, if not before...
A year and a half earlier, our son who had been born when my husband and I were foreign correspondents in Mexico City spoke English, Spanish as well as some Cantonese and Tagalog he'd picked up when we moved to Hong Kong. He played with children his age and with toys. Although his bathroom skills were far from perfect, he was getting there.
In the months after he turned 3 1/2, progress slowed, stopped and he banged a hellacious u-turn. He lost his language, his ability to play and he was back in diapers full-time. A year and a half later we still couldn't believe what had happened. A lot of people, including my mother-in-law, a special educator, shook their heads sadly and said "autism."
But how could that be? Autism as we'd read over and over did not start at 3 1/2. It started at 2, or earlier. Maybe it was the move back to New York? Or his new baby brother? Wouldn't he just get over that? Could the nanny we lovedso much and broughtto the United States when we left Asia have done something? We couldn't believe that, but stranger things had happened.
To hedge our bets we sent him to a "special" school. Each day when his small yellow school bus came home we hoped that the little boy we once knew would pop off of it and say hello, grab a toy truck or a bat and ball. But he didn't.
Eventually we drove to New Haven. Accept it, the doctors at Yale said. Forget about the timing. For all intents and purposes your little boy is autistic. And severely so.