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Never a Typical Baby
It was a moment I'd been dreading, and still, it managed to take me by surprise. When Ethan, the oldest of our three sons, was diagnosed with PDD-NOS, at first it sounded almost as though the neurologist, who had a few missing social skills himself, was speaking a foreign language. Then I realized that he was using a clinical term: "Do you mean autism?" I said, staring at the three-year-old boy I'd spent the whole morning prepping for this trip to the doctor's office: making sure he was well-rested, well-fed, boned up on his limited vocabulary -- all to escape this exact, life-ending diagnosis."That's it!" the doctor said excitedly. "PDD means he hasn't got every trait of classic autism, but it's still very serious. Basically you'll hope he can one day write a check, hold a simple job, things like this."
It took all my concentration not to cry in front of this man. I asked if there were any books he could recommend.
He thought for a while, as if he'd never heard the question before. Finally he said, "Rain Man is a good movie. Have you ever seen that one?"
Ethan was never a typical baby. He was colicky and allergic, beset from the start by skin rashes and a chronic runny nose. Ethan was also late to the milestones first-time parents anxiously wait for. He smiled at nine weeks, crawled at nine months and walked at 16 months. "The late end of normal," our smiling, bow-tied pediatrician said. But as time passed, the list grew: He had words by two years, but didn't combine them. He didn't point, didn't wave bye-bye, and blinked stupefied at a knot of doting adults clustered around him. Worse still, he seemed happiest playing alone, dribbling sand through his fingers. The more I read, the clearer it was: The Rain Man doctor may have been an oaf, but he wasn't wrong.
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