We’re still here visiting my mother. I haven’t retreated to the archives as yet. But I’m having a hard time writing about being here. My mother has been introducing us to all her friends and it is really nice. It is heartwarming to see Mom in such a supportive environment. There must be a couple of thousand years of […]
Arrival We arrived very late. I appreciated the humor of the Southwest Airlines crew, but I am glad that it was a relatively short flight. I had traveled the New Jersey Turnpike to where my mother lived, many times before, but rarely in the dead of night, and even more rarely in a cab or […]
I was very patient and tried to show Mike things. No matter how methodical I was, no matter how correctly I followed the rules of teaching, he would not learn. There he was, in front of me. I would try to look into his eyes, but he was never still and would always shake his […]
We are leaving today. It was an eventful trip during which we saw our daughter (my stepdaughter) transform from a mother of one to a mother of two; our granddaughter change from a sibling-to-be, to an actual sibling and our grandson age from -2 days old to be more than one week old. Standing I’ve […]
No trouble from me I never wanted to be any trouble. That holdover from my childhood is with me today. The presence of my older brother was confounding enough for my parents. Mike was low-functioning, autistic and non-verbal. It must have been a great shock for them. Even as a child I didn’t want to […]
Michael did not acknowledge my presence except as something between him and the food on my plate. But Mom said that he would occasionally try to hit me with a hammer, so he must have know I was there. Years after my childhood I had a nice chat with Dad about my growing up years. […]
A man whose health has been declining of late, goes to the doctor with his wife. The doctor checks him over and as they leave, he asks to speak to the wife alone in his office. “Your husband is gravely ill,” the doctor says. “But if you follow my instructions to the letter, he will […]
[Note: Today, I’m taking a break from writing about autism twin studies in order to do some more reading. The most recent autism twin study that I am aware of is the 2011 study by Hallmayer et al., which showed that environmental factors contribute more to autism risk than genetic factors. This is an important matter to study […]
Refrigerator mother hypothesis of autism thaws The refrigerator mother theory, blaming autism on a cold and uncaring home environment, was beginning to lose traction in the late 1960s. Bernard Rimland, a psychologist with an autistic son, directly challenged this hypothesis in his book, Infantile Autism: The Syndrome and its Implications for a Neural Theory of […]
For those of you who just happen to come across my blog, welcome. I am interested in autism because it has directly affected my family. My older brother is autistic, nonverbal and low functioning. I am trying to look at autism from all directions. During the past couple of days I am looking at Autism […]
