An aspect of life with Anthony that is perhaps not as difficult to endure as some but is nevertheless wearisome, is that the scope of activities available to us as a family is limited to those where Anthony's antics will not draw undue attention. That generally means looking for outdoor venues with either a fair amount of ambient sound or plenty of space between people. More often than not, it means we simply avoid going out together. Or, we sometimes end up doing things that are ultimately uninteresting, like navigating a corn maze as we did yesterday.

We tried going to see Toy Story 3 at a second-run theater recently, thinking that if a large tub of (inordinately expensive) popcorn plus soda did not keep Anthony quiet enough even for a building likely filled with smaller children, we could at least take him to stand in the back for the balance of the movie. That turned out to be precisely what happened, but I discovered the extent to which I apparently no longer notice the noise Anthony makes when a younger father sitting in the back row asked if we could be quieter.

Our daughter was disappointed later because she has also tired of the trouble we have in finishing activities together. Whether it is a movie or one of our children's individual recitals or orchestra performances from which I must withdraw with Anthony, we are accustomed to the improbability of having a normal outing.

We of course have asked family members in particular to stay with Anthony while the other four of us go out. That duty has usually fallen to my long-suffering mother, who has endured bites and head-butts too numerous to count. Naturally, we don't want to ask her any more than absolutely necessary, and we try to take him to my parents' house (some distance away) only when my father is available as well.

The ideal situation would be to have an adult male watch Anthony, but we don't see that happening any time soon. We live in an area that has little in the way of public services in that regard, and asking acquaintances would present another set of problems because of concerns about liability if Anthony does happen to attack--unlikely with a male, but not impossible--and reticence of others in dealing with the unknown. I myself would be hesitant to sit with someone else's autistic child despite having one of my own; it is understandable that our friends would be even less comfortable with the idea than I am.

Our younger son started playing soccer about a year ago, and immediately displayed something of a knack for it. His defensive play in particular compares favorably to that of the rest of his competitive league team, to the extent that we frequently see the opposing side score as soon as he is substituted out. That proficiency has come with a price, though; the coach abandons assurances to let him play other positions whenever the team falls behind.

I write this in a blog about Anthony because, although I mentioned in my last post that I don't compare him much to his siblings, I have wondered if Anthony also would do well at soccer if he were normal. I once, a few years ago, tried to have him kick a soccer ball at a park. To my surprise, he started kicking it with his instep. Most children kick initially with their toe--I still have to coach my younger son against that. Being a dad who loves sports, and hoping for anything that might engage an autistic child, I encouraged Anthony to keep kicking it. Alas, he became upset rather quickly when I tried to persuade him to continue.


I had not attempted to get Anthony to kick a ball since then, until I recently took him with me to his brother's practice. There, to keep him occupied, I passed the ball with him around the field while I simultaneously monitored the team's activity. Once again, he kicked reasonably well with his instep, and even sometimes with his outstep. But, he clearly had little comprehension of why we were doing it, and did not care for me urging him on.

Incidentally, I had taken Anthony with me so that my wife could volunteer at a school function. However, he made enough noise at practice that, even trying to keep him a distance from the action, he sometimes distracted the players. It of course didn't bother our younger son, but his teammates would stop what they were doing to look curiously. That's not what the kids need, and I might not welcome it if I were the coach. So, Anthony now stays home.

We recently took our family to a fundraiser for Anthony's school. Although I am certainly supportive of the idea of bringing in money for the school, I have to get past my own reluctance to attend.

I am of course used to being around Anthony. I deal with him all the time, and I frankly don't think about him very much. I suspect that sounds somewhat unfeeling, but I don't know another way to cope with this human being that should have had his place in our family as the eldest child.

I try to let his birthdays slip by without notice. I avoid associating him with life events that other boys go through, and I minimize any time spent comparing him to his siblings. I no longer have a dream I wrote about previously, by the way.

But when I go to Anthony's school, I see many other children for the first time, and I have two emotions. The first is, perhaps surprisingly, sadness for the parents of those children. This is a circumstance in which I think misery does not love company. The second, however, is a resurfacing of buried feelings toward Anthony. It took a few years to get over the realization of what we had with him; seeing others similar to him only provides me with an unwelcome reminder.

I suspect that I am not the only parent with these issues, because my wife and I have noted that the attendance at these events falls far short of reflecting the number of children at the school.

On a slightly different but nevertheless related note, though, I am extremely impressed with the capacity for caring that the administrators and staff at this school have. I am also aware that there are those who work with special-needs children because they have one or more such children themselves. I don't think I could find it within myself to regularly deal with others in addition to my own.

Anthony gave me two writing topics in one day recently, although I had not originally planned to write about the second because of its unpleasant nature.

The first incident came after I had gone to work. It was our daughter's birthday, and she had opened presents in the morning. My wife called me a couple of hours into the day to tell me she found that Anthony, who had been left unattended briefly while she did laundry, had apparently dumped out a small sample bottle of perfume incidentally included among our daughter's presents. Since the perfume had been free to us, cost wasn't the issue. However, our daughter liked the fragrance, so we felt sorry for her. It is one thing for adults to deal with frequent aggravation of this sort; we wish Anthony's siblings didn't have to go through it as well.

The second incident began with Anthony in the car after my wife picked me up from work. I noticed that he was passing rather foul-smelling gas. I customarily take him to the bathroom shortly after returning, but I realized the matter was unusually pressing this time when I saw him get out of the car with a wet spot at the back of his pants. I got him to the toilet quickly, but suffice it to say I thought it necessary to give him a bath afterward.

I wondered aloud to my wife about the cause of Anthony's extremely loose bowels. He has for two or three months reverted to infrequent movements, so I have occasionally given him stool softener or Miralax. Nevertheless, it had been probably a week since the last dose of anything in that regard.

We puzzled over that question, but had forgotten about it to an extent when we were later again discussing Anthony disposing of the perfume. What had he done with it? The scent was still lingering in the room, but nothing indicated he had poured it out in the sink or on the floor.

Then came the moment of clarity: Lack of evidence and loose bowels meant he had viewed the bottle of liquid as something to drink.

Something is eating the tomatoes in our garden. Fruits that are reasonably ripe end up half-eaten before I can gather them. So I have decided to pick tomatoes at the first signs of ripening while still intact, and bring them inside to more fully mature. I anticipate they won't taste quite as good, but they will be preferable to being beyond salvaging.

However, "something" is eating the unripe tomatoes in our kitchen as well. I realized a couple of days after bringing in the first batch that they were gone. Did my wife or other children know what happened to them? No. Anthony was likely the culprit.

I brought in a second bundle a few days ago, and they were again gone the next day. That presents a little more concern than previously, because this group also contained a tomato with blossom end rot that I was specifically saving only for its seeds to plant next year. I don't know if there is any harm in eating such a fruit, but I think I would find it fairly disgusting myself, and would certainly dissuade Anthony from eating it if I were aware.

I am trying once again with more tomatoes. We have put them in a thin white paper bag on the counter. Anthony apparently has not noticed them yet.

Having Anthony change his clothes can be a perilous undertaking. I have to ensure I get the match right the first time; if one article of clothing is too small for him, for instance, removing it in favor of another is certain to set him off. He usually does not become violent enough to put holes in walls or turn aggressive toward others, but I don't care to take that chance.

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An event outside recently gave us little time to eat dinner, so we stopped at a fast food restaurant to buy a bucket of fried chicken on the way there. I guess we have never actually had Anthony eat fried chicken, because I did not know that he would eat the bones. Chicken leg bones. We tried to get him to stop and instead eat only the meat, but that of course made him angry as well.

My wife works part-time at an elementary school which uses a year-round format. Anthony's school is on the traditional schedule with a long summer break. Because our daughter is now out of elementary school and subsequently also on Anthony's schedule, we are having her stay at home with him while my wife goes to work.

We would not be able to have this arrangement if my wife's work did not allow some flexibility, however. She has already had to return home a couple of times to deal with him being violent. Then, yesterday, she had to return to attend to Anthony in the bathroom.

My wife had to leave for the day before Anthony got out of bed. We can ask our daughter to tell Anthony to go to the bathroom when he wakes up, and we can ask her to wash his hands when he is finished. Yet, for reasons we don't understand, Anthony will often not urinate even though sitting on the toilet unless someone is standing in the bathroom with him, telling him to go. And if he does not go, he will likely become very upset later before relieving himself on the floor. We cannot ask our daughter to stay with her brother in the bathroom. So, my wife had to excuse herself from work for a time to come home and make him go.

It is our intent at some point to do . . . something . . . with the interior walls and doors in our house to keep Anthony from damaging them when he has a tantrum. We learned early on that repairing drywall was a futile exercise because Anthony targets again the same spots. To spite us, perhaps? It seems that way.

My wife came up with the intermediate strategy of covering holes with pictures, paintings, and--to create balance where it would otherwise not exist--handmade wall coverings and organizers.


We have new holes in Anthony's bedroom and door today, however, after a particularly bad stretch wherein he was determined to not only pull stickers from library books but rip covers off some of our own nicer books as well. My wife dragged him to his room and managed to keep the door closed for a bit against his wishes. She could hear him banging his head against the door and wall, but decided that was temporarily preferable to the alternative.

He turned his pulling and ripping obsession toward his wall after creating holes. We now have a few swaths of drywall with multiple layers pulled off. At least they are not visible to the casual visitor.

Anthony has a skin fetish. I have had this on the list of writing topics for perhaps a year now, and have avoided addressing it to this point partly because I know I will not begin to do it justice here (and partly because there are things I really don't want to write). But, briefly, he often wants to touch bare skin. We have learned to keep him a safe distance from girls or younger women wearing lower-cut shirts, but both his sister and brother also have to deal with him aiming for their armpits and legs when they wear short-sleeved shirts and shorts in warmer weather.

Our younger son was practicing his violin on the scheduled day of his lesson recently when Anthony again tried to bother him. Son number two tried to move away quickly, and ended up cracking the neck of his instrument. My wife thankfully had the foresight to buy insurance with the violin. However, she found the dealer would not provide a replacement while they fixed it, so she went elsewhere and rented another so he could go to his lesson and continue practicing.

I wrote in April that my wife and two younger children would be traveling overseas to see my wife's parents. They left at the end of May while I took time off from work. We had scheduled those vacation days prior to plans for the trip to cover some of the time Anthony would be out of school.

I have often recognized that I am probably very fortunate to have the association of my wife and other children to balance the strains of dealing with Anthony. We have wondered aloud how a family friend with an autistic son manages her situation with neither a spouse nor other children around. During the time by myself with Anthony for most of the 11 days until my wife and other kids returned, I received a taste of what her life must be like.

I am certain that my woes were aggravated with the abrupt and virulent onset of seasonal allergies, as well as my inability to get our clothes dryer to work after considerable time and energy spent on its repair in lieu of minimally enjoyable pursuits. Nevertheless, I had not anticipated the rather extreme stress from being with Anthony--and only Anthony--day and night.

All of the issues we commonly face with Anthony were suddenly compounded and magnified. No one around, for instance, to rely on momentarily so I could relax a bit and ensure he was not peeling stickers off library books. Or having a human being nearby but only receiving reciprocal communication similar to the head-nodding and teeth-baring of a horse if I ever said anything directly to him. It's slightly amusing, but not so much so if one starts to crave a spark of intelligent companionship.

I believe I made an egregious tactical error in not actively seeking out opportunities to be around others. If my wife ever needs to go away again for any stretch, I'm holding at least one of our other two children hostage. Or I will accept any and all invitations to dinner.