Behavior is Communication

You hear that a lot when you have a kid with autism. Kids with autism can't always say what they think, or how they feel, or what they want to tell you. Instead, you get behavior. And then you try to figure out what it means. Try, because while you won't always be successful (as a matter of fact, you will fail to figure it out a great portion of the time), you will still want to try, because, well...look at him. Wouldn't you want to know what he's thinking?

He's perfect, in every way. He looks like my husband, but with the slender fingers of a pianist. His hair has lost the reddish tint he was handed down from my grandfather. He has blue eyes. His face is changing, the way faces do when they wind their way through puberty. Above his lips soft hair forms a the beginnings of a mustache. He's almost as tall as me. He's growing muscles in all the right places. There are hearts out there he would have broken.

He aggravates us to no end. "How can he look like that and act like this?" "This" being the incessant, idiotic, bizarre strangeness that sometimes makes us all feel like we are going crazy. What is he trying to tell us?

Damned if I know.