Writing in the Washington Post, Jayne Lytel recounts her journey with her son Leo, who was labeled as autistic at age 2. She put her life on hold to assure that Leo had appropriate early intervention services — in his case, up to 35 hours a week of seven different therapies. Now that Leo is nine, Lytel can report that he’s made great strides, no matter whether or not scientists decide he has “recovered.” An excerpt:

I won’t say that all the traits that led to Leo’s diagnosis have disappeared. But the ones that remain are not unique to children with autism spectrum disorders.

For all his achievements, he is a spirited little boy with hair-trigger emotions that can overtake him when he cannot bend the world to his will. His behavior is sometimes compulsive. In Freudian terms, he is all id.

As for me, I became the socially isolated person I worked so hard to keep Leo from becoming. My social network disintegrated in the years that I immersed myself in Leo’s recovery.

Jayne Lytel is author of  “Act Early Against Autism: Give Your Child a Fighting Chance From the Start” (Perigee).

See a Q&A with Lytel and Dr. Fred R. Volkmar, director of the Child Study Center at the Yale School of Medicine, here.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 18th, 2008 at 2:11 pm and is filed under autism, behavior, therapy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.