of course—when, who came,
what theatre, what he felt—but
he also has an equally astonishing memory for the events
of his life and ours. Today, the
parallel planes are still firing,
but he doesn’t have to rely on
the movies nearly as much.
----Sharon C.: My son’s favorite
characters change with each
new movie released, and I
imagine Owen’s did as well.
However, the one that stands
above them all for Conner is
Walt Disney himself. Was one
particular movie or character
more dominant in assisting
Owen with his communication? What was it about this
particular character that you
think seemed to reach Owen
the most?
Ron: I don’t know if there’s
one above
the others. It
changed with
circumstances
and his needs.
Certainly, the
wise sidekicks—
Rafiki, Merlin,
Timothy the
Mouse (Dumbo),
Jiminy Cricket—
have a special
place atop the pantheon. Owen
has been in an internal conversation with them for years. In
some ways, those characters
have helped him navigate the
world.
-----
Sharon C.: For parents who
have more than one child, finding balance can be very difficult. How did you handle this
with Owen and your oldest son
Walt?
on a personal level versus Disney scripts, how did you feel when
Owen responded back and answered your question?
Ron: Out of body. But, after a moment, so very natural. We all
have voices in our heads. Owen—and kids like him—just have
that to a greater extent than others. When we started to talk as
characters, worlds opened up for all of us, not
just him.
-----
“When we started to talk
as characters, worlds
opened up for all of us,
not just him.”
Sharon C.: The first time you
transformed into Iago (from
Aladdin) and spoke to Owen
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Sharon C.: Did your therapist/doctors/counselors/family/friends support your Disney approach to learning and communication?
Ron: Not at the start. The view was that this was
a perseverative “restricted interest” that should
be ignored, cut off, turned into a transactional
tool for behavorial modification or viewed benignly—and, in a way, immaterially—to be interested in until we
could find a handle to pull him out. We loved our team and still
do, but that was the prevailing view. No one saw that it was a
world we could enter and live in with him, filled with references,
symbolic connections, navigational tools. Owen’s therapist got it
when Owen was about 13, and he jumped in with us. Eventually,
we used his “intrinsic motivation” in his affinity to build, with him
often leading, a vessel that he now drives into the world. A vessel, mind you, of acquired capacities and emotional valence that
he operates largely free of the literalism of the scripts and lyrics he
long ago turned into a language.
ZOOM Autism through Many Lenses
Ron: Well, the sibling issues
are huge and under studied.
Really, they’re under-appreciated. Remember, the sibling
is often the only same-aged,
“neuro-typical” person the
child will
ever truly
know. And
they’ll be
together
across the
entire life
journey.
We guided
Walt, of
course, and
brought
him into
the adult camp rather early to
explain what he was seeing.
But we always gave him free
will to act—in regard to his
brother and the wider world—
as he decided. You can see him
evolve and mature through
the pages of the book. It’s one
of the most moving parts of
the book as, of course, it has
been in our lives. Walt was
the only one Owen drew as a
hero. And, in so many ways,
he was and is—in Owen’s
parlance—“the protector of the
sidekicks.” He’s now 27 and
works in Washington for the
Consumer Financial Protection
Bureau, the new agency that
was formed after the financial
crash to protect the public, the
little guy, against predations
of financial institutions. Makes
sense: a federal protector of the
sidekicks.
----Sharon C.: My son is 23, and
Disney is still his passion,
his motivation, his dream. Is
Disney still as prominent for
Owen now? What is his passion? What are you doing, as a
parent, to continue to grow this
passion and allow him to be all
that he can be?
“Live in the moment with
your children, even if it
means crowing or swinging
or dancing in front of
TV screens.”
Ron: He still loves
Disney and loves
animated movies,
but his interests
have widened. It
goes. Nothing gets
lost. But he’ll want
to move on sometimes and say, “I’ll
give that a rest for
a while.” That’s
not a bad thing,
but the underlying foundations of how he uses
these movies to make sense of
the world remain intact. Think
of it this way: everything connects. The DNA of all things
can be found in everything if
you know how to look for it.
----Sharon C: Looking into the
“magic mirror,” what do you
foresee in Owen’s future?
Where do you see him in the
next ten years?
Ron: It’s hard to say. As Owen
will tell you, “the future is
unknowable.” The thing to
remember is that our kids grow
on a different trajectory than
many of their peers, but they
do grow and find new venues
and experiences. And, like the
rest of us, they learn more from
the defeats than the victories.
More and more, Owen’s life
is his own. He’s finding his
own challenges and joys and,
thereby, the lessons are ones he
firmly owns.
----Sharon C: What do you want
our readers to know that you
wish someone told you in the
early years?
Ron: What would we have
wanted to hear? The question
is also what would we have
believed? There is something
we learned only after much
trial and error: you can’t be
trying to fix these kids every
minute of every day, even if
that’s what you feel you must
do with the understandable
urgency of helping them live
fuller lives. You have to tamp
down that urge and just enjoy
them, even if it’s miles away
from you’re traditional and
expected array of joys. They
live more in the moment than
most of us do. Many folks and
wise teachers—from Christian
to Buddhist—try to teach us all
to do that: live in the moment,
the here and now. Live in the
moment with your children,
even if it means crowing or
swinging or dancing in front
of TV screens. That’s where
you’ll find them, waiting, and
together, you’ll feel a burst of
a kind of lovely liberation. No
one told us to do that. Now,
that’s what we tell people, far
and wide.
ZOOM Autism through Many Lenses
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