by Alex Cullison

Created on: January 30, 2007   Last Updated: November 25, 2008

A Journey of Inches
Understanding and facilitating the high-functioning atypically autistic child.

My son, Alexander, is a teenager and is a senior at Chantilly High School here in Fairfax, VA. He is high-functioning atypically autistic. You wouldn't know it by looking at him. He looks like any average teen. He goes to classes that facilitate those with learning challenges. Alexander doesn't have many friends, although he would like them. He just doesn't understand how to make and maintain friendships. He eats alone. You wonder what he is thinking about. He walks home from school alone, looking down at the ground, sometimes stopping to pick up a discovered "treasure" (some small discarded trinket). And yet, if you take a few minutes to cultivate a conversation with him, you will find Alexander to be an interesting conversationalist. He is knowledgeable and well traveled. But I am getting ahead of myself.

My wife Diana gave birth to Alexander in May of 1989; a fairly normal childbirth by all respects. He was healthy and a good baby. He has two half-sisters, but they have always lived very far away and have not participated much in his life.

One thing the reader should know here. Autism, whether it is a more conventional form of autism or something more high functioning, typically reveals the condition from the onset of birth or later around three years old (latent autism). Why the delayed symptoms? Who knows?

Alexander was perfectly normal (not an expression we like to use) until he was about three. When other boys were playing with toy trucks, using their imaginations, he just couldn't get into it. He started repeating himself (echolalia) and referring to himself in the third person. He stopped making eye contact. He started lining up small toys in long strings, and he was not sociable with other kids.

This was a period of time (early 1990's) when the field of knowledge for autism, ADHD, and Asperger's Syndrome was still being defined and clarified by academics, psychologists, psychiatrists, neurologists, school counselors, and a host of other concerned parties. Diagnoses were not consistent. When people thought of autism, they had the stereotypical image of Dustin Hoffman the Rain Man.

We, like most parents, thought our child was perfect, albeit, eccentric. We didn't let his idiosyncrasies cloud our opinion. We would have loved him if he had gills and fins.

Our first clue that there was a problem was when our son went to daycare at the home of a nice lady who had

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