Autism Vox

Charlie takes it all in

by Kristina Chew, PhD on January 6th, 2007

“Peetszah!”

At my mention of that word, my son Charlie, who has celiac disease and who has been on the gluten-free casein-free diet for the past 7 1/2 years jumped up from the couch. He was on the verge of dozing off—Charlie has been having trouble going to sleep and a nap at noon means he will not fall asleep till the wee hours of the morning. I recently found some gluten-free rolls that he loves and now found a pizza that he likes, too—-when Charlie was younger, he did not seem to notice if we ate pizza or bagels or bread if we ate them in front of him. A few years ago, he became much more aware of what my husband Jim and I do and, in particular, of what we were eating—and he wanted to eat the same things as us.

He wants to do what we do, rather than being like the stereotype of the autistic child off in his own world; he is more than aware of what we are doing.

He takes it all in.

In Charlie’s case, we always presume competence. We do not talk about Charlie in the third person (”he is stimming, isn’t he?”) when he is in the room for us (Jim’s best friend, a father of two older children, once upbraided us for doing this). Even if Charlie does not look like he understands, he so often does—he knows what is going on, and tells us in many ways, though not always with words.

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POSTED IN: Charlisms, Food and Diet