The Autism News | English


As the father of a teenage son with autism, I have coped with many challenges: finding the right school for a boy who can’t sit still and has trouble connecting with peers; managing medications to help tame his anxiety and other symptoms; learning to negotiate endless one-sided conversations about my son’s two obsessions — animated movies and animals.

But those demands have never annoyed me in the way The Question does. Rarely does a week pass without someone asking me: “So what do you think? What causes autism?”

This summer has seen a plethora of headlines on the topic. July brought news of a study showing an unexpectedly high occurrence of autism among fraternal twins, a finding that could implicate both genetic and environmental factors. Then new research revealed that younger siblings of children with the disorder have a 20 times greater chance of developing autism than the general population. Last month’s story was British researcher Simon Baron Cohen’s “assortative mating” theory. It speculates that parents who share certain tendencies — such as expertise in math and science — may produce children with a higher risk for autism.

So what’s the parent of a living, breathing autism specimen to do with the constant barrage of speculation? My standard reply: I’m grateful that scientists are focusing on autism. I’m going to concentrate on my kid.

That’s the simple answer. But it’s actually more complex. When you read about studies on, say, breast cancer or juvenile diabetes, the objective is clear: to eradicate these awful diseases and save lives.

Autism, on the other hand, occurs on a spectrum. At one end are individuals who can barely communicate, can’t care for themselves and seem lost in a constant blur of involuntary movements. At the other end are people with quirky dispositions, rigid personal habits and a tendency to speak and think obsessively about one or two subjects such as train schedules or insects.

My son falls somewhere in the middle: Ezra is verbal, but, at 15, he still tends to talk about the same things over and over: otters, Pixar movies, dog breeds. He doesn’t rock or flap his hands much anymore, but his sensory challenges make it difficult to stay in one place, so he paces in math class and during recess while other kids are chatting with friends.

Like many people with autism, he also possesses a remarkable memory. He knows the running times of hundreds of animated films, has mastered the details of several animal encyclopedias and can recall the exact date in 2003 he first heard a woodpecker. Learning a new acquaintance’s birthday, Ezra will charm the person by instantaneously announcing which Disney movie premiered on that exact date.

More important, he has remarkable enthusiasm for life, greeting days that are significant to him — the first of the month, for example, or the day of the “Cars 2″ premiere — by running around the house before dawn shouting with infectious delight.

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