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January 6, 2002
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Laura Miller didn’t know what autism was 10 years ago,
when her first child was born. By age 1, Anthony wasn’t answering to his name.
Laura could stand behind him and yell, “Anthony!” But the boy wouldn’t flinch.
Anthony didn’t babble. He rarely even cried. Laura thought he was deaf.
She took Anthony to the doctor, but the doctor was
perplexed. Tests showed that Anthony’s hearing was normal. Maybe he’ll grow out
of it, the doctor suggested. Months later, in July of 1993, Laura went to a new
physician. The doctor greeted her, took one look at Anthony and said, “How long
ago was your son diagnosed with autism?”
“What’s autism?” Laura asked. She was 8 months
pregnant.
Doctors assured Laura that her second child would be
normal. They
didn’t know preliminary studies indicated the disorder might
be genetic. Laura was thrilled when her
second boy, Andrew, began saying his first words—“Mama” and “Dada.” Laura was
sure the doctors were right.
Then, one afternoon in August of 1994, when Andrew was
almost 1, Laura called for him, but Andrew didn’t answer. Laura found Andrew in
his room, ignoring her calls, hypnotically laying his blocks in a long line. He
did not answer. He did not look up. Laura telephoned her father. “Andrew is acting
deaf,” she said. “I think he’s autistic too.”
Soon after, doctors confirmed the early symptoms of Andrew’s
autism, and Laura started on shots of Depo-Provera, a contraceptive. But by
January, she was pregnant again, and her husband, Howard, was furious. What if
their third child was also autistic? The doctors calmed Howard’s fears. They
had never heard of anyone having two autistic children, much less three. Plus, autism
is up to four times more common in boys than girls. Their daughter would surely
be normal, the doctors said.
Laura was overjoyed. She pictured frilly dresses, hair
bows and ballet. She imagined her daughter, Sarah, having tea parties with
Anthony and Andrew. She saw her little girl as a little teacher. In Laura’s
dreams, the little girl would cure the boys. And for one full year after Sarah’s
birth, Laura had her wish. Sarah was her perfect child.
Then came Oct. 27, 1996, the day after Sarah’s first
birthday. Laura was helping Sarah practice walking. Laura was on one side of
the living room, Sarah on the other.
Sarah toddled across the room into Laura’s outstretched
arms. Each time she crossed the room, Sarah would say, “I love you!” Then, “Again! Again!” In Laura’s memory, Sarah seemed to
be running that last time she crossed the room.
“I love you!” Sarah said.
“Want to do it again?” Laura asked.
Total silence.
“Sarah? Sarah!”
It was as if something snapped, Laura would later say.
As if, at that
moment, her child died in her arms. “It can’t be,” the
doctor later said.
But it was.
Autism.
Again.
• • •
Laura Miller is now an expert. She can tell you that
autism is a lifelong neurological disorder that usually strikes in the first
two years of life, interfering with a child’s ability to communicate and relate
socially.
Laura knows the symptoms: the lack of eye contact (Andrew
will turn his head away and look at you sideways); the repetitive behavior
(Sarah can spend hours pouring water out of the pool with a small cup); the
rigid need for routine (if Laura takes her children to Wal-Mart, they
immediately have to go to the video section or Anthony will have a violent
fit).
What Laura won’t mention is that most autistic children
will never marry, have a job or live independently. Half never learn to speak.
Laura Miller doesn’t mention these things.
On the front door of her Port St. Lucie home, she has nailed
a small plastic sign. It reads, “Expect a Miracle.”
If you’re lucky, you might get a miracle once in your
lifetime— recovering from a debilitating illness or becoming pregnant after you
thought you never could. By Laura’s estimate, she gets a miracle a day.
One morning, she didn’t hear Anthony get up. She found him
sitting at the breakfast table. He had poured himself a bowl of cereal.
Miracle.
The next weekend, Andrew was lying on his stomach on the
back patio, when Sarah jumped on top of him. “Andrew, get her!” Laura yelled.
Andrew rolled over and pushed Sarah off his back. For a second, they tussled on
the ground. And if you didn’t know differently, you’d think they were a pair of
regular kids. Miracle.
Just the other night, Sarah was tugging on Laura’s arm,
trying to get her attention. Laura said, “Sarah, just say ‘Mama.’ “ “Mama,”
Sarah said. It was the first time in five years. Miracle.
Laura Miller, 33, is a full-time single mom who cannot
count on regular child support. Sometimes Howard has the money to send a check,
and sometimes he doesn’t. So Laura feeds the kids, pays the rent and keeps the car
and all the major household appliances running on $1,431 a month—the children’s
disability payments from the government.
When the washing machine broke, Laura was on her hands and
knees, pulling at belts and extracting lost toys, until the machine rumbled
backed to life. If something breaks that she can’t fix, like the air
conditioning in the minivan, it just stays broken. But none of that matters to
Laura.
“We’re having miracles everyday. Who has that? If you
could add up the value of all those miracles, then we would be the richest
people in the world.”
• • •
Autism affects as many as 1 in 500 children. It is more
common than Down syndrome, multiple sclerosis or deafness. And the numbers seem
to be increasing dramatically. The reported number of autistic children has doubled
in the U.S. over the past six years. Locally, numbers have quadrupled since
1996.
Some suspect that environmental toxins or childhood
vaccines are causing the increase. Others believe that children previously
labeled with different disabilities—or missed altogether—are only now being correctly
diagnosed as autistic. The three key characteristics—impaired social
interaction, impaired communication and repetitive behaviors—can range from
mild to severe. One autistic child might sit in a corner, rocking and banging
his head; another might have an above-average IQ; and some have savant
abilities, like Dustin Hoffman’s character in Rain Man.
But the central characteristic of autism is what child
psychologist Leo Kanner called “extreme autistic aloneness.” As human beings,
we gravitate toward one another. We need friends and relationships. But this piece
of us, so central to our humanity, is what the Miller children do not understand.
They disregard, shut out, ignore. What we gravitate toward, they retreat from.
And if, by chance, something breaches the walls of their inner worlds, the
Miller children become overwhelmed. The sound of a plane in the distance, the
feel of the breeze, the glare of the sun can set off a tantrum.
Though not widely accepted at the time of Laura’s
pregnancies, the working theory points to 10 genes that must interact to
trigger the disorder. If one child in a set of identical twins is autistic,
there is an 80 percent chance the twin will be autistic, too. That’s proof that
the disorder is genetic—but also that genes are not everything.
There are other families like the Millers. A wealthy
couple with three autistic children in New York recently donated millions to
scientists at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. But generally, after
autistic symptoms appear in one child, parents stop having children.
Doctors now tell women who have given birth to an autistic
child that, in the case of a second pregnancy, they have up to a 1 in 20 chance
of having a autistic child. No one knows the odds of having a third.
• • •
Laura slipped into a deep depression after Sarah’s
diagnosis. The
children couldn’t dress themselves. They couldn’t feed
themselves. They
didn’t sleep more than a few hours at a time. “It was almost
like I was
taken out of this world and put into the Twilight Zone,”
Laura says. “I
could look into their eyes, and it was like they were
looking through me. I
would talk to them, and it was almost like talking to the
wall. Every time I
looked at them, I thought, ‘There’s no hope. This is going
to be my life
forever. I’m going to be taking care of infants for the rest
of my life,
except they are going to get bigger and stronger.’ “
At night, Laura would rock Sarah and whisper: “Come on,
Sarah. I know you’re in there. Fight it.”
“When the boys would go to school, I would put Sarah in
front of the TV and watch show after show.” When the boys got home, Laura
couldn’t remember the hours since they left. She lost whole days.
“I didn’t want to go out. I was almost embarrassed. I didn’t
want to see people that knew me or my kids. The big question was, ‘If she had
one, why did she have more?’ I don’t know how many times I had someone ask me what
I did during my pregnancy. Did I do drugs? Did I drink?
“I kept thinking, ‘Why me?’ I was always a good kid. I was
great in school. I never got into trouble.
“My father said, ‘What’s the matter?’ I remember
yelling at my dad:
‘You have no idea what it’s like. You had five normal
children. I have three
autistic children. I lost Sarah. Sarah’s gone.’ “
Laura looked forward to death. “I would never have to cry
again,” she thought.
Then, on a clear night in April 1997, hope arrived on the
chords of a song playing on the car stereo.
“It was a night I was losing my mind,” she remembers.
Laura had put the children in the minivan and was driving around the county,
desperately trying to get them to fall asleep. She played a religious song—Sunday
School Rock—over and over, because Anthony screamed whenever it ended. It was
after midnight by the time she pulled into the driveway. She began to turn down
the music, praying for silence. Then she heard something. She clicked off the
stereo. It was Anthony.
“I thought: ‘That’s not him. He doesn’t talk.’ “ But it
was. Anthony was singing the chorus: “I love Jesus, yes I do.” They were his
first words. He was 6. It was the first
miracle.
• • •
“Good morning,” Laura says to each of the kids as they pad
into the kitchen. It is shortly after 7 a.m., the start of a day in the Miller
house. There’s a lot of pointing and
gesturing.
“What do you want? You want this?”
Laura pulls food from the refrigerator and cabinets.
Doritos? Little
Debbies? Frozen lasagna? Nutrition went out the window a
long time ago. Laura hands a can of
Pringles to Andrew, a chocolate cupcake to Sarah, then reaches for an aspirin
for herself. Sarah sucks the frosting, then drops the cake on the floor. Woof,
the dog, lunges. Laura rolls her eyes, sighs and scoops up crumbs. Kids bolt in
different directions.
There are two loads of laundry a day—at the least—depending
on wet pants or wet beds. Floors are mopped every day, and bedrooms are vacuumed
every other. If she’s lucky, Laura eats a meal a day, “just so I don’t have to
worry about eating again,” maybe a frozen dinner zapped in the microwave around
lunchtime.
Someone’s always coming or going at the Miller house.
Laura qualifies for 60 hours of state-funded child care. One program gives her
more hours than any other parent in the state. She has hired from an agency,
but one worker started abusing drugs and another stole money, Laura says. So
Laura hires her sister, her mother and friends—who else can you trust with children
who cannot speak? And for $8.50 an hour, they bring home-cooked meals, coffee
or just their company, really. None is a specialist in autism, but they are
ready to change a diaper, chase a child or just listen to Laura cry.
“Sometimes, I just think that I’m a vessel for the kids to
get something to eat or to drink. Like they don’t care who’s standing in the kitchen,”
Laura says, about the kids. “Like they’re just going to use me to get what they
need.”
By evening, Laura is exhausted. Dinner is a glass of Dr
Pepper. She collapses into bed. “I put a stuffed animal against my back and
pretend it’s somebody. Then I hug the crap out of the pillow,” she says.
This is not exactly the life Laura Saliba had planned. She
wanted to be an accountant. She liked the decisiveness of numbers, the neat
columns, the clear answers. Her father had worked as a corporate financial
officer in Manhattan before he moved the family to Florida and opened a video
store in Fort Pierce.
Laura graduated from Fort Pierce Central and then took
classes at Indian River Community College. She met Howard Miller, fell in love
and got married. Then came Anthony. Then the autism. Then Andrew. And autism. Finally Sarah. And autism. Now this is her
life—three children she adores, three children with autism.
______________________________________ Laura met Howard in 1986 at
Dipper Dan’s
Ice Cream Shop,
a little place off Midway
>> DO SOMETHING ABOUT AUTISM NOW << Road, long gone now.
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No Cost! second together—meeting
for dinner, watching movies,
_______________________________________ taking a romantic trip to
the Bahamas. They married in 1990. Anthony was born a year
later.
But Howard liked to drink, and there were other women, he acknowledges.
After Anthony’s diagnosis, Howard started drinking more and coming home less.
“We heard it’s rare for a second child. Maybe at first we
worried, ‘Maybe we’ll have another autistic kid.’ But they say it’s so rare,”
he says. “Three just kind of blows your mind.
“I started drinking, trying to forget about it, trying to
accept it. I kept hoping it would get better. It never did. I drank more. I
kind of got out of control.”
There were a series of separations. A few days before Christmas
1997, Howard slammed Laura’s head into a wall, according to the police report.
The children were in the same room. They didn’t even wince. The police came, arrested
Howard. Laura filed for divorce the following year.
So Laura is a single mom. Howard lives in Georgia with his
mother and works at a screen-door factory. He says he’s coming back. “I’m kind
of missing them. I’m always going to love her. I love the kids.”
This makes Laura furious. “Did you ask him why he didn’t
call on Andrew’s birthday? Why did he do all the things he did? He’s just
looking for sympathy. The only sympathy I have for him is that he is missing miracles
every day. He’s missing three beautiful children grow up. They are going to
grow up and be independent, and they are not even going to know him.”
•• •
Laura hasn’t made many friends over the years. There are
the child-care workers who sometimes become friends, but those never seem to last.
Then there’s Melissa Collison, 38. She was a friend first. Five days a week,
Melissa leaves her own sons, who are 8 and 15, to come help take care of
Anthony, Andrew and Sarah.
“You have your kids getting on each other’s nerves,
and it drives you
nuts,” Melissa says. “Then you come to Laura’s house. I
would complain about
my boys fighting. Laura would just say, ‘You don’t know how
lucky you are. I
wish my kids would interact.’ “
When Melissa mentions Laura in conversations with other
women, she starts, “My friend Laura,” then it automatically follows, because
you can’t leave it out: “She has three autistic children.”
Talk about opening the floodgates.
“The question that most people ask me is, ‘Why in the
world did she
have three?’ They just automatically put the blame on her,”
Melissa says. “They all want to know if
it’s genetic, and why she kept the kids, and why isn’t the dad in the picture?”
So, Laura hasn’t had many girlfriends.
•• •
Laura has gone for genetic testing. “We went back as far
as my great-grandmother. The only thing we found was Down syndrome in one of my
mother’s cousins. No mental retardation. No type of learning disability. Nothing,” she says. “We can’t trace it
anywhere.”
Except that Laura can’t go to sleep until she checks the
locks three times. On the day the Social Security checks come in, she’ll call
the bank three times, just to make sure the money’s there. If she touches an
ashtray, she has to wash her hands—three times.
A few years ago, she started seeing the same thing in
Andrew. “He would have to touch everything in order. Like a tile on the floor,
he’d run up to touch it. He’d have to touch it like 10 times before he could
walk away.” The doctor explained obsessive compulsive disorder. “I thought, at first,
it was my fault, that these traits were from me,” Laura says. “I never
connected it to the autism.”
Then, there’s Howard.
He has trouble making eye contact—“just like the kids,”
he says.
Laura likes to think that Howard’s genes caused the
autism. “If the
scientists or the doctors were to come back and say, ‘Laura
you have an autism gene, you caused them to be autistic’—that would be like . .
. I can’t even find the words . . .” She pauses, covers her mouth with her hands:
“I’m not going to cry. I’m not going to cry. I’m too tired for that.” Then
continues: “It would be more devastating than even the autism is to me. I look at their faces and to think that I
could put them into that world. I couldn’t live.”
•• •
Anthony is 10 now. Today, he is on the patio blowing
bubbles, mesmerized as they float away. His blue eyes stare from beneath barely
visible eyebrows. His high cheekbones and pointy chin give him the impish look
of Peter Pan. You walk up, absently pop a bubble. Then it happens. Anthony turns and looks at you. After
spending whole days together, he has never looked at you.
You pop another bubble, then another. He is belly-laughing
now. You are jumping up and down, whooping as you pop bubbles, laughing—ecstatic
for the connection and desperate to keep his attention.
The moment lasts for only seconds and then, like a soap
bubble, is gone.
Minutes later, Anthony is walking back and forth along a
section of the fence in a corner of the yard. He moves with the grace of a
dancer, his body loose in an arm-swinging, lolloping gait. He is walking on his
toes, absently flapping his hand next to his face, clicking his tongue and
staring into space. You follow, call his name, splash water from the pool. He
does not look at you. Playfully, you reach out, try to tickle him. He moves
away.
He makes a sweeping arc with his arm. A conductor to a
silent symphony. He holds his hand aloft, slightly angled, then adjusts the
angle, watching. He makes the gesture dozens of times a day. Lost in the sweep
of his arm, the light on his upraised palm, the color of skin against sky— this
is Anthony’s world.
Like most 10-year-olds, Laura’s oldest can spend hours in
front of the television set. But when Anthony watches one of his hundreds of
Sesame Street or Fraggle Rock videos, he focuses on a 2-second segment, playing
it again and again, his finger on the rewind button. He stands inches from the television,
whispering the dialogue along with the characters.
Anthony is the only one of Laura’s children who speaks. He
can recite biblical passages, his ABCs, Hamlet’s soliloquy. In school, he can
write his name in light, shaky letters, and he can read sentences like: “Mother
sees the flowers on the trees.”
But when he tries to tell his mother that he wants his
grandmother or a drink, all that comes out is “Gama” or “Dr Pepper.” Laura
sometimes thinks Anthony is trying to say something else, but the wrong words
keep coming out. If she asks: “Do you want pizza?” Anthony echoes: “Do you want
pizza?”
Other times, the words don’t come at all. Then Anthony
throws his head back, opens his mouth wide and lets out a wail. He digs his
chin into his fist and bites down on his hand. He punches himself, leaving a
black eye. But the words won’t come.
So intuition and long-standing codes have replaced the
English language in the Miller household. In the kitchen, Anthony walks up to
his grandmother, throws his hands in the air and bellows, “Cookie!” Evelyn Saliba,
59, bellows right back: “Cookie Monster!” She buries her face in his belly.
Anthony convulses with laughter. In between gasps, he whispers “Cookie” and
throws back his arms.
To the experts, these moments of connection are enough to
classify the Miller children’s autism as moderate. In extreme cases, autistic
children will scream if someone just enters the room. But, looking at Anthony,
Laura cannot call her children’s autism anything but severe.
Laura has learned to savor small moments—like feeling
Anthony gently touch her hair and drape his arm around her head. This, Laura
likes to think, is how Anthony says, “I love you.” He lingers for a second,
then flits away.
Sometimes Laura will call, “Anthony! Say ‘I love
you.’ “ And sometimes Anthony will echo: “I LOVE YOU!” But Laura has never
heard him utter those words on his own.
• • •
Andrew is the middle child. The shy one. The smallest one.
At the age of 8, he has a wiry build and deep, pleading brown eyes. His left
front tooth is broken off almost at the gum, and an adult-sized tooth—too big for
his delicate features—grows next to the gap. His favorite color is red, Laura
thinks, because he favors red gum balls.
Andrew’s greatest treasures, above all else, are balls.
Andrew Miller owns hundreds of balls. Balls of every color, pattern and size
are scattered through the house and back yard. Laura’s not sure exactly how
many. Three hundred? She has bought all of the balls carried by Wal-Mart and
Kmart. She has a motorized ball that moves by itself—Andrew is afraid of that
one. And there’s a bedtime ball that
helps Andrew go to sleep.
If you bring a new ball to the house on Andrew’s birthday,
pull it out of a shopping bag and set it on the kitchen table, in a second,
Andrew spots it. His tiny hand plucks the gift away. It’s a plain blue
playground ball. Andrew has one just
like it already, but that doesn’t matter. He is beaming. He carries it around all day and digs it out
of a tub of old balls after a grown-up has put it away.
Every morning when he wakes up, Andrew points to the back
yard. Beyond the sliding glass door and through the screened porch, there is a
back yard like no other. A kind of kids’ kingdom. Its castles: four brightly
colored playhouses. Its boundary: a chain-link fence. Inside: a rusting swing
set, a wooden tree-swing and an above-ground pool. Two dozen balls dot the
yard. Four trees stretch overhead. Long
grass grows under the shade of a huge trampoline. It is quiet except for the
whisper of the breeze and the tinkle of a chime.
Andrew’s yell comes like the first notes from an
unpracticed instrument—uncontrolled, off-key. He grabs a ball from the ground, crouches
and flings the ball forward. He crisscrosses the yard. One by one, he lobs
balls into a plastic playhouse, wailing if a ball doesn’t land just right.
Eventually, the house is jammed with dozens of balls. Andrew climbs to the top,
surveys his work, then begins tossing the balls back down.
The cool, smooth roundness of a ball, its silent arc
through the air, the gentle thump, thump, thump it makes as it bounces across
the grass or settles into the plastic house—this is Andrew’s world.
Andrew does not speak.
communicate. Press a picture; the board says the word. But
it’s hard to remember that you have a board if you’re only 8, and autistic.
When Laura finds Andrew crying and throwing himself down
on his knees in the yard, she softly reminds him, “Go get your board.”
A tiny finger presses pictures, and a stiff, computerized
voice— sounding entirely too grown-up for such a small boy—announces: “I want . . . Soda . . . Please.” Sometimes the
pictures get pressed in the wrong order. The words come out: “Please . . .Soda
. . . I want.” This makes Andrew cry. He’ll bounce up and down, let out a wail
and press his chin into his hand. Laura makes him do it again—guiding his hand
with her own— until the words come out right.
Teachers think Andrew may have apraxia, a condition where
a person understands everything going on around him, but faulty wiring in the
brain prevents him from communicating back. “He tries. He tries to make sounds. He’ll be in tears trying,” says teacher
Joanne Sweazey.
So Andrew mostly points. He never picked up sign language
like Sarah, who can sign for , candy and open, but mostly just signs for candy.
Laura opens the refrigerator door and asks Andrew what he
wants. Andrew points to a pack of
frozen lasagna. But when it’s made and on the table, he is back at the
refrigerator. Someone has left the refrigerator chain unlocked—a risk around
children who can empty the contents onto the floor in seconds.
Andrew opens the door and pulls out a perfect plum. He
holds it aloft, ducks his head slightly, raises his eyebrows and, with pleading
eyes, looks at Laura. She points to his untouched plate of lasagna.
Andrew flings the plum to the floor. He throws his head
back, straightens his body and jumps up and down, pogo-style. He lets out the high-pitched
and rhythmic cry of a monkey.
But Laura insists. Andrew sits down, picks at the lasagna
for a second, then darts out the door. Laura sighs at these moments and quickly
moves on. They happen a hundred times a day. But there are other rare moments
when Andrew seems like a normal boy.
Laura is in the pool. A ring of rust warps the metal
walls, water spills through the holes in the liner. Andrew climbs a rickety
ladder and leaps into the pool, arms outstretched toward the sky, mouth wide in
a smile.
There is something about the water that brings Andrew out.
If you jump into the water with him, he makes eye contact, laughs and bounds
toward you, ready to play.
“A lot of times I feel angry,” Laura says. “I see the
little child he could be when he’s in the pool, and as soon as he steps out, it’s
over.” Andrew laughs, gets a mouthful of water and sends a spout arcing through
the air at Laura.
Laura grabs a plastic football filled with water, stands
and fires backs. Andrew scampers up the ladder. A plane is passing overhead.
Laura points to the sky. “Andrew! Airplane!” Andrew points to the sky.
“Air-plane.”
It is his first word in seven years.
“Yeah!” Laura yells, throwing her head back, smiling
heavenward.
“You said a wooorrrrdddd.” She flings her arms wide
and lets her body
fall back into the water. Andrew jumps in after her.
• • •
Sarah is nearly perfect. With her blue eyes, tiny baby
teeth and golden tangle of hair, this 6-year-old autistic girl could easily be
a cherub peeking over a cloud.
Today, Sarah is next to the above-ground pool. Barely tall
enough to look over the edge, she reaches in and scoops water into a plastic
sherbet container. Her muscles tensed, she puts the edge of her bucket to her
right cheek, bends and lets the water run down her face. It streams into a thousand
sparkling pearls that splatter into a sunburst on the ground. The cool water on
her skin, the translucent ribbon twirling to the ground— this is Sarah’s world.
With a birdlike shriek, Sarah throws back her head,
shudders and smiles. Her arms are bent, wing-like. She has a few tiny rocks
clutched in one hand, a small toy wedged in the crook of her arm. She pours
from a standing, then a crouching, position. She runs a few feet and pours
again, letting the water slide down the side of a lawn chair or splatter onto a
rock, then looks up, shudders and smiles.
Sarah does not speak. She is learning to nod her head “yes,”
an effort that rocks her whole body forward. She can make the sign for “open”
by flattening her palms and pulling them apart. But when she wants to go outside,
the sign she has made a hundred times before suddenly eludes her. She stands at the door making the sign for “candy,”
twisting her finger into her cheek. She signs candy, candy, candy, with one
hand. Her body tense, her face contorted, she clenches her other hand in
frustration and pinches Laura’s arm. “Say ‘open,’ Sarah. Ohhhh-pen,” Laura
pleads.
Sarah lost all of her words—Mama, Papa, An-do (for Andrew)
-- on the day she became autistic. But listen closely. In the constant stream
of chirps and coos, sighs and squeals, you might hear a word. Or think you do. They come in breathy whispers. Standing in front
of the sliding glass door, Sarah musters a body-trembling “Ohh.” For open? On
the trampoline, someone hears “Jump!” Laura points to a hole in Sarah’s pants. “Sarah,
you have a hole!” Sarah looks up, wide-eyed: “I do?”
Last year, Sarah was having violent fits. On the bad days,
teachers would count 60 pinching, biting or kicking incidents before the last
bell rang. Sweazey and teaching aide Loma Amore push up their sleeves to show tiny
scars on their forearms. “Sitting? Forget it,” Sweazey says. “You’d try to get
her to sit, and she’d yell.” This year, Sarah can sit for five minutes at a
time. Put a rubber pegboard in front of her, and she’ll start pushing the pegs
in on her own.
Lenny Schafer, Editor@feat.org • CALENDAR EVENTS@feat.org
Michelle Guppy
Catherine Johnson PhD
• Ron Sleith •
Kay Stammers • Edward Decelie
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AS PROVIDING MEDICAL OR LEGAL ADVICE. THE DECISION WHETHER OR NOT TO
VACCINATE IS AN IMPORTANT AND COMPLEX ISSUE AND SHOULD BE MADE BY YOU, AND YOU
ALONE, IN CONSULTATION WITH YOUR HEALTH CARE PROVIDER.