Susan Senator

I am so much in love with the book Rules by Cynthia Lord. It is a children’s novel that deals with autism in the family, much like the wonderful Al Capone Does My Shirts, but this is contemporary, and told from a 12-year-old girl’s viewpoint, about her younger autistic brother. It is perfectly done, not heavy-handed, and is completely believable.

It is called “Rules” because both Catherine, the girl, and David, her brother, like rules to live by. Catherine records David’s rules, like “no toys in the fishtank,” or “some jokes are to make you laugh, but some jokes are for making fun of you.” She reminds him of his rules at times. It blows my mind to think of all the intricate social rules that neurotypical people make up and just kind of know, and what that must be like for autistic people. They, of course, have different rules. So David has rules that Catherine knows about, too, like, “When you don’t know the words, borrow somebody else’s.” This he does, when he needs calming or is tongue-tied, he dips into the Frog and Toad books by Arnold Lobel, and uses dialog from there. It is very moving to read about David and Catherine exchanging this dialog and seeing the effect it has on each of them, that they understand the underlying meaning and that they care so much about each other.

I wish it felt like my boys cared more about Nat. Should I have forced more on them when they were younger, so that they would be in the habit of including him and interacting with him? Or would that have made them resent him? Or resent us?

I always felt that I wanted a natural, egalitarian family life, where no one person’s rights were more important than another’s. I did not want Nat to feel like an obligation to them, but he has not evolved into a pleasure to them doing it my way. Maybe obligation is better than oblivion. I know that I did not want an autism-centered house. Our house is mostly neurotypically-centered, because that is the majority here and in the world. But is that fair and right? Maybe it is, when love and respect are the central force. Hope so.