Who defines autism for me?

My stepson Mikey. He's 12 soon to be 13. I've been with him since he was about 5 or 6. He's changed a lot like any kid would only not in the normal ways. Yeah, he's gotten tall. Yeah, he's getting hair on his upper lip. But I still can't play basketball or baseball with him. And he may throw the football in the backyard some but it's next to impossible to teach him how to throw it properly.

The idea of teaching him how to swim makes our head spin. How do you teach someone something when they don't seem to understand what you're saying? And they can't tell you what they think you're saying because their vocabulary is limited to the most basic of words. We can't talk to Mikey in sentences. We can't have full blown conversations with him. We're lucky to be able to ask him questions like 'What do you want to drink?'. Even then we usually have to show him the choices because every time we ask him something he usually just repeats the last couple of words of the question. Example...'Mikey, do you want milk or juice?' Mikey: 'Juice pweez' 'Are you sure? Do you want juice or milk?' Mikey: 'Milk pweez' So we have to show him the two and he'll say 'WASO!' to one or the other. Waso in 'Mikey' means no. And we go through this with everything from pancakes or waffles to ice cream or donuts to McDonald's or Sonic.

You see, autism is a developmental disorder. Those that are afflicted by it have a hard time with development that children without autism learn naturally or more easily, and that's if they can learn it at all. Which a lot of times they can't.

But we love him like crazy. He's a great kid. He loves to swing. I love to see him swing because I built the swing for him. To see him enjoying it almost makes me cry. When he's happy he's got the biggest smile and the brightest eyes. And looks? Don't get me started. He's about the most handsome 13 year old boy you'd ever see. If he didn't have autism he'd probably be modeling right now. And remember, he's my stepson so I'm not biased. He's got his momma's Italian genes and it shows.

On the other hand, he can become quite unruly when upset. His mother and I have a saying, "Sometimes you just wanna eat him up, other times you just want to eat him." When he's in a foul mood everyone gets to share in his ire. Luckily we learned that he can usually be calmed down with bear hugs, usually administered by myself. Sometimes at the cost of a certain amount of physical pain inflicted by him. But that's ok. He's a boy and I'm a man and that means I do whatever it takes to make him feel better when he gets in a mood. He's bit me, choked me, smacked me and other little things but I'm still happy I'm in his life. You learn something from a child with special needs that you don't get to learn from other children. You learn just how unimportant your needs are compared to his.