The Prodigy's Cousin Read Free Page B

It had taken almost a year for Alex to master using the binder. Was this as good as communication would get?
    Lucie hired a private behavioral therapist. The therapist came to the family’s home and immediately criticized the PECS binder: There were too many pictures on a page, she scolded. It was too overwhelming for Alex. The therapist’s interactions with Alex were no better. Alex didn’t respond well to her. When Lucie intervened, suggesting a couple of activities Alex enjoyed and mentioning how she thought he might be starting to demonstrate affection, the therapist told her that autistic kids didn’t feel love. Lucie kicked her out of the house.
    Despair, long circling, took hold. Lucie felt a slow but building tide of disappointment, then bitterness, then resentment. She was pouring hours and hours of time into trying to help her son, but the rewards of parenthood were elusive. Alex never hugged or kissed her.If she tried to hug or kiss him, he pushed her hand away. He never looked her in the eye or smiled.
    When she was working at the hospital, she could sometimes, almost, shut everything out. She enjoyed what she did and felt effective. But when she got in her car at the end of the day, dread mounted. She didn’t want to go home. “I felt hopelessly inadequate and ill equipped to deal with what had happened, and I was resentful deep down inside of Alex for making me feel that way,” Lucie recalled. “Being resentful about your child, it makes you feel very guilty. It makes you feel like a monster.”
    Autism bloodied her marriage. She and Mike had always had a great relationship. They’d hit it off immediately when they met years before at a friend’s birthday party and Mike, dressed in a black turtleneck and black-rimmed glasses, asked Lucie’s opinion about the Canadian medical system. They had mutual friends; both loved Halloween; even planning the wedding was a breeze. But autism nearly ripped them apart.
    Their finances were blown. They were a two-income household, a doctor and an engineer. They had never expected to pinch pennies, but as their bills mounted, they struggled to make ends meet.
    They started couples therapy, and it helped. The therapist reassured them, over and over again, that their relationship was solid. All of the problems they were having, all of the stress, was completely circumstantial. They were big circumstances, but circumstances nonetheless. They could work through it.

    When Alex was two, the family caught a break. The Portia Learning Centre, an organization that provides services for autistic children and children with developmental delays, opened a nearby location. Lucie and Mike sprinted through the door.
    The therapists at the center began with an intensive assessment of Alex. They emphasized the importance of getting to know him, of studying his particular case. In a moment that Lucie will neverforget, the therapist remarked on Alex’s potential: I really see something in him, she said. Though other experts had told Lucie that Alex would never speak meaningfully, his new therapist said the first thing they were going to do was get him to talk.
    Lucie told the therapist they had been working on speech for months. She told her how when she handed Alex milk, she would look directly at him and enunciate, as clearly as she could, “milk.” Maybe that’s too intense for him, the therapist suggested. Let’s try something he might find a bit less overwhelming.
    They started working with Alex in his home. During the first session, Alex stood in the living room in front of his model train set, slowly, quietly, moving the trains back and forth across the tracks. The therapist positioned herself behind him and watched him play. Slowly, quietly, she began making the same consonant sound over and over again:
mm mm mm mm mm mm
.
    Back and forth, Alex moved the trains.
Mm mm mm mm mm mm
.
    Back and forth.
Mm mm mm mm mm mm
.
    The