Different folks I was thinking about how babies react to different people. William seems to be happier with me than with his Nanna, for example. Now, the interesting part is, I haven’t had the experience of raising kids of my own, so I really don’t know what I am doing. But when I hold William, […]
Six months ago, I interviewed my granddaughter just before her baby brother was born. Sidra agreed to speak with me once again at a later time to give me an update. We began our chat toward the end of the massage she was giving William. Here is our conversation: Zayde (me): What is it like […]
Baby William is doing very well. He is a lot different from when he was a week old. Back then, I couldn’t even get his attention. I suppose, since he was busy getting used to living in an air environment, that’s understandable. Plus the fact that his gaze, focused at about 8-10 inches according to […]
What do spinning, roller coasters, New York City, the Golden Gate Bridge, stolen building stones, helicopters and trains under water, a broken lock to a construction site, an elevated train that ran out of track flew through the air landing on a person in the East River and a bitten cheek have in common? Answer: […]
I had so much fun since we arrived. Sidra is such a doll. She could hardly wait to do a stop-motion video with me. I was the cameraman and she was the director. Rebecca, her American Girl doll was the star. All it took was 150 snapshots, rudimentary editing and we had the whole of Rebecca’s […]
My older brother Mike is autistic, profoundly retarded and nonverbal. I had gone to parties at his group home before. I thought I had seen everything, and then I went to his Halloween Party. It was being held at a group residence in one of the bad areas of New York City, a place where […]
I hope I havn’t misled The major focus of my blog is autism from the point of view of a sibling. My older brother, Michael is autistic, low functioning and nonverbal. He was at home until I was about 10 years old. After he went to Willowbrook, a large mental institution on Staten Island, we […]
I just started reading The Science of Evil by Simon Baron-Cohen, the autism researcher who also wrote Mindblindness. The subtitle of the Science of Evil is, On Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty. Baron-Cohen’s thesis is: cruelty exists when empathy fails. Baron-Cohen’s definition of empathy First part of definition: “Empathy occurs when we suspend our single-minded […]
I mentioned in my last post that I am very much interested in communication because of my inability to communicate with Mike, my older brother, who is autistic, profoundly retarded and nonverbal. I would like to discuss the concept of communication in general, see how its underlying principles apply to language, and the problems that […]
The great race Dad always liked to have his orange juice. Once when I was a kid, about 4 or 5 years old, he challenged me to a juice race. I don’t know if this was a way to get me to drink my juice or not, but I accepted the challenge. My Dad, not […]
