3 Little Words: An Autistic Son's Gift

For the past three years, I have been trying to coax three little words out of my 5-year-old son's mouth. I haven't heard them since he was 2, when he'd hug me and say "I love you" over and over with the same intonation he'd heard on his Barney videos. But like many of the phrases Lucas used back then, those words disappeared from his vocabulary.

We learned that Lucas had autism when he was 3. Oddly enough, the diagnosis came as a relief to me and my husband, Dan. Deep down, we'd always known there was something different about him, and when we heard the "A" word, it all made sense. Finally, we understood why Lucas could recite every line of Dr. Seuss's Mr. Brown Can Moo! Can You? but could barely put more than two words together on his own. And why he'd learned all of his letters, numbers, and shapes by age 2 but still couldn't answer a simple yes-or-no question like "Would you like some milk?"

The diagnosis helped explain all Lucas's little oddities, like his insistence on watching the microwave clock count down or his refusal to wear a coat, even on the coldest days. And it gave us permission to stop blaming ourselves for his strange outbursts and major tantrums. In the past two years, we've come to understand who our son is and how he operates -- and we've been able to get him the services he needs.