"Look!" Laura
said, pointing a finger towards her son Patrick who was running happily
around the office. "Now he is hyperactive!" "No," I
answered quietly. "He is just starting to be the little boy you
always wanted to have!" When Patrick had come to me a few months
earlier, he sat in a corner of the play room, silently and with an empty
stare. On other days, he rocked on his belly, muttering incomprehensible
words or repeating the same set of sentences over and again. He covered
his ears with his hands when hearing faint sounds but didn't budge when a
door banged behind him. He loved lining up little cars meticulously on the
carpet of the office, forgetting the world around himself. Patrick had
been diagnosed recently with autism and his parents were in despair.
Over the last few months,
Patrick's behavior has changed dramatically. Now he rarely puts his hands
over his ears to protect himself. He has started to make more eye contact
and is more and more in touch with his environment. His speech has become
clearer and he has started to relate to his teacher and to the kids in his
Special-Ed class. On that particular day, he was having fun at the expense
of three other boys who were not autistic. They had set up a target to
shoot at in a corner of the playroom, and Patrick was rushing to steal it,
before they could aim at it. He was smiling mischievously: it was great
fun! Laura had a hard time adjusting to the image of her son: her little
boy who had spent most of his time lost in a world of his own, was now
playing with other kids.
