Dear Mr. Bernstein, Hello, and welcome! I hear you are one of my son Jack’s teachers this year. I thought I’d give you a week to kind of settle in before I presented you with the rundown. You know what the rundown is, don’t you? Oh, it’s just something we special-needs parents do at the […]
Listen, I don’t like to give a lot of advice when it comes to autism. I mean, I hardly know what I’m doing and it’s all very complicated and every kid is different, right? But after we chatted for a few minutes in the Target aisle, and I walked away with my cart and you […]
Last week, a reader wrote and shared her story with me, about a husband and a father and a boy and autism. This family lived inside my head for days. For M. and B. You are not alone. To my Dad, It is a hot dry August now. We’ve had some thunderstorms but the air […]
Come here, Jack-a-boo. Sit next to me on the couch. You can look through the DVD’s in just a minute. Yes, I know The Mummy is three minutes longer than Cool Runnings. For now, please, sit with me. See, I’ve been thinking lately about promises. You know, like how I promised that we would go […]
If I were a painting, I would be colorful and bright and messy and unusual. If I were the ocean, I would be calm and blue one moment, and gray and stormy the next. If I were a song, I would begin softly, and slowly. Then I would increase my pitch and my volume until […]
A few weeks ago, I chatted with a father I know who also has a son with autism. In fact, they had just put him into full-time residential care. He told me about the year-long process to find the right place, and the profound sense of loss so deep, it felt like a death. Just before […]
I had such a nice time talking with you tonight at the baseball game. You cracked me up with all of your questions. Once upon a time, I had little boys like you. Now they are big boys. They don’t ask me questions anymore. Mostly, they tell me things they know but they think I […]
Today, I will be here. I will be here in this house with my kids and my dog and my son with special-needs and my husband who has dark, wavy hair. Today, I will remember that when it comes to autism, there is no right. There is no wrong. There is just me, and a […]
This weekend my 12-year old son, Charlie, won an award for Little League. I felt so happy, watching him walk onto the field in his orange uniform, with his shoulders squared and his head held high. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw my other son Jack jumping and hopping with his […]
