Charlie. For you will start. To drive soon. Yes, Jack. That’s true. People ask me all the time what it’s like to have a child with autism. What is it like? To have a boy like my son Jack? I never, for one moment, forget he has it. Autism is the tympani of my background—the drumbeat […]
Season’s greetings, friends and family! I am happy to report that, despite the challenges 2020 handed us, the Cariello family had a wonderful year. My husband Joe and I are doing well, and all five kids are happy, and healthy. Quarantine was a great opportunity to spend some real quality time together. We played lots […]
My name is Carrie, and I am raising a son with autism. It is exactly nothing and everything I ever imagined. The truth is, I’ve wished for a crystal ball ever since my son Jack was a toddler. I desperately wanted to see into his future. Would he speak in sentences? Would he be able […]
I never thought it would come to this. That is the truth. I guess I always hoped for the best. I mean, a small part of me knew deep inside, but I never gave it a whole lot of thought. I didn’t think about it while I was researching preschools, or trying to read his […]
Today, I will remember my son did not ask for autism, any more than he asked for light brown hair or a lazy eye. If we have a rough morning and he says a swear word because he can’t get the lid off the peanut butter, I won’t get mad. I won’t grit my teeth […]
Did I tell you my son has autism? It’s usually one of the first things I mention, not because I want you to feel bad for him, or for us. I tell you about my him so you’ll know right away I don’t want to talk about nonsense. I don’t want to know about the […]
Hi. My name is Carrie. I have a son with autism. His name is Jack. He is almost fifteen years old. He has blue eyes. In case you were wondering, he is not a savant. He does not possess some exceptional skill in math. He doesn’t swirl colorful blobs of paint into masterpieces, and he’s […]
Can I tell you a secret? It’s a little embarrassing, to be honest. We always thought our son Jack would recover from autism. We thought he would “get over it,” or heal, or just morph into a regular old kid who likes to toss a baseball around and fly kites on windy days. For years, […]
Mama, how do you build a family? A family? Well, my child, a family is at once the easiest and the hardest thing to build. Think of it as a garden. Maybe you expected rows and rows of neat tulips, standing straight and tall in their church pews, eating organic apples […]
I keep a small green box on my desk, and inside are all the letter tiles from an old game of Scrabble. When I sit at my laptop to write, and the words won’t come, I remind myself that inside this box is every sonnet, play, song, and story ever written. Romeo and Juliet. Little […]