Refrigerator Mothers

[00:00:03.97] Do you want some biscuits?

[00:00:06.02] Do you want some biscuits? Hm?

[00:00:09.38] Yes, I do, thank you.

[00:00:11.38] [LAUGHING]

[00:00:11.82]

[00:00:13.12] What's this? What's that about?

[00:00:15.65] Bright.

[00:00:16.85] It's bright? OK, if you say so.

[00:00:19.19] Can you see the flower?

[00:00:20.99] Can you see the flower? Hm. You want to hear the elephant?

[00:00:25.67] [ELEPHANT SOUND]

[00:00:29.65] That's very surreal, isn't it? Huh?

[00:00:32.02] Elephant.

[00:00:32.19] [ELEPHANT SOUND]

[00:00:34.59] Wow!

[00:00:36.25] I had this stormy little boy, and I lost him.

[00:00:39.57] Yes, here is my car.

[00:00:42.59] And I've been trying to find him ever since. And I'll never stop. I know he's in there somewhere.

[00:00:52.83] Here we have Santa Claus pictures. And it shows an interesting progression. At two years, he was a little shy. But at two, we often are. Three years, looking pretty good, looking at him. Four, he's not doing too bad, even there. There's five, now he's pulling away. Six, his eyes are empty. So something has happened.

[00:01:23.07] That is when we went over to the first psychiatric facility. And they came up with the diagnosis of autism, which I knew nothing about. And I remember being amazed that it wasn't that the child was the patient, so much as it was the parents.

[00:01:41.85] I thought, well, what have we done that is so awful, that would drive a child into such a regression? I was told I had not connected or bonded with the child because of inability to properly relate to the child. And this caused autism. I couldn't quite see how that could happen. But here's someone of authority saying that it had happened.

[00:02:12.19] [CHIMING]

[00:02:43.70] [MUSIC - JOHN LENNON, "MOTHER"]

[00:03:20.62] So these are the pictures of Chris that I dug out yesterday. He was born in March of '57. To me, he seemed like a good baby. He nursed well. He slept well. It was really a very nice time of our life.

[00:03:36.10] Yeah.

[00:03:37.09] Now, here he is smiling a little, and reaching for a toy. I mean, I don't think I ever saw him reach for a toy again that I remember. But you know, I didn't know I was going to have to remember these things. I thought it was just part of a normal flow.

[00:03:53.05] We knew something was wrong by the time he was one, when he stopped looking at us. He would always look through you, or over your shoulder. And here he is at 20 months, spinning that little thing there, with his face expressionless. It's autism. He's gone.

[00:04:12.12] Touching him made him unhappy. He would fall on the floor. And he would go like this. And he'd bite his hand over and over again. This is now 1960. So he's three.

[00:04:22.46] Chris smeared feces all over his room two times a day. He would smear feces on the ceiling, in the bed springs, all over the furniture. He would smear it in the [INAUDIBLE] of the air conditioner. I used to have to clean his room, sometimes, with a toothbrush.

[00:04:36.43] One day I lost it. I called you up and I said, if you don't come home, I'm going to kill him.

[00:04:41.23] Yeah. Actually, you said you were going to kill yourself.

[00:04:44.41] Was that what I said?

[00:04:45.19] Yeah.

[00:04:46.01] We were just anguished and confused. I can remember going into Dr. Eager's office, and he said, why are you here? And I said, my child needs help, we need help. We need to be able to help our child. That's what we want from you. And that's what we didn't get.

[00:05:03.69] Instead of getting help, we got Bruno Bettelheim.

[00:05:07.65] Tonight Dick's guests are Wally Cox, child psychologist Dr. Bruno Bettelheim.

[00:05:17.08] Infantile autism is the most severe psychotic disturbance of childhood known to man. And I think that if I were a child, in order to survive, one must have the feeling that somebody, you're terribly important to somebody.

[00:05:32.81] That somebody cares.

[00:05:33.85] That somebody really cares for you. In the case of these extremely disturbed children, not only nobody cared, but there was a wish that it would be much better if the child wouldn't live.

[00:05:46.37] Bruno Bettelheim was someone who put himself forward as an expert in the care and treatment of autistic children. He had been in an internment camp briefly in Dachau. He wrote a book in which he said the experience he had in Dachau paralleled the experience of autistic children. And he knew that autistic children must feel like their parents were like Nazi prison camp guards. That was one of his key similes.

[00:06:17.30] This autistic child felt that everybody wants him to be dead, as the Nazis indeed wanted all Jews to be dead. And when that cannot in one's own inner feeling be counteracted-- yes, but somebody cares terribly much about me-- then one is so hopeless that one has not the energy to fight back.

[00:06:41.30] And the general knowledge out there, at that point throughout society, was that mother was responsible for making their children autistic. There was no other view. And the world fell for it.

[00:06:55.32] Hi, Chris.

[00:06:56.31] Hi.

[00:06:57.29] How are you today? Hm? Can I sit down? All right, I won't try to sit.

[00:07:08.96] Autism is a range of disability. And Chris is pretty far down in the low end.

[00:07:16.70] Yesterday he was pretty relaxed. And around 7:00 last night, he just started rocking right now, yeah.

[00:07:24.62] Started like this?

[00:07:25.31] Yeah.

[00:07:25.69] Yeah. You couldn't tell why, not particularly?

[00:07:28.43] Not at all. No.

[00:07:29.43] [MAKING LOUD NOISES]

[00:07:36.52] It's been a couple of months since we've--

[00:07:38.80] Seen him like this.

[00:07:39.50] Seen him like this.

[00:08:05.11] Wendy likes breakfast at McDonald's. And she orders the same thing every time we go.

[00:08:12.38] A medium Sprite and a small decaf.

[00:08:16.95] What else do you need for your party? Did you get a camera?

[00:08:21.30] I already got my little camera.

[00:08:23.85] Do you have film?

[00:08:25.84] It's in the hutch drawer. You don't have any trail mix do you?

[00:08:31.04] Trail mix, yeah. That's a good idea, Wendy. Always count on you for a good idea for something like that.

[00:08:38.93] And she and I can sit off by ourselves, and we can talk.

[00:08:43.46] Well, good for you.

[00:08:44.57] And if I read the paper, that seems to give her more freedom to talk, because I'm not concentrating on her.

[00:08:52.96] I could stay in bed.

[00:08:53.82] Yeah, you can stay in bed tomorrow, because I have to go to work.

[00:08:58.62] Many times, life was not all that easy. John and I needed to have a special love in our family for our children. We were childhood sweethearts. He lived across the road. And he was a year older than I was. So of course, he was the older man. And I was the younger woman.

[00:09:19.64] Then the war came. And he joined the Air Force. So I joined the Coast Guard. And we were walking down the street, both of us on leave. And he said, you want to get married? And I said, yeah, I think I do. And we were married the day the war was over.

[00:09:38.40] Life was beautiful, optimistic and secure, and happy. And in '51, Wendy came. And she was quiet. But when she did cry, she didn't want to be comforted. She much preferred to be by herself.

[00:10:02.64] Well, I was confused. Naturally we want to hold our babies, and make them happy. And I just couldn't do that. It didn't seem as though I was succeeding. I felt kind of lost, to tell you the truth.

[00:10:20.84] We took her to a child psychiatrist. He called us into his office. And he addressed most of his remarks to me.

[00:10:32.66] Mrs. Roberts, we have noticed that these children, they seem to reject the mother. They don't want the mother's comforting arms. Now, why do you think that is, Mrs. Roberts? And I thought, well, if I knew, I wouldn't be here.

[00:11:00.55] In spite of her gentleness, mother is unable to establish a comfortable and secure relationship with her children. And her movements towards them are lacking in sensitivity.

[00:11:11.46] I met another mother sitting in a hallway. And of course two mothers always start to talk in a hallway. And she said, are you one of the refrigerator moms? And I said, what do you mean? She said, well, don't you know that's what we are?

[00:11:27.50] Refrigerator mother. Ah, that's the label that you get stuck on when you were trying to find someone to help you.

[00:11:36.41] Mother's determination to make normal contact with Margaret is apt to drive her further and further into her autism.

[00:11:44.68] A refrigerator mother, as defined by Bettelheim and a Freudian child psychologist, was someone who held back from interacting and loving a child, someone who was remote, someone who wasn't there for the child, someone who wasn't giving. The child turns into an autistic person because of the cold, rejecting refrigerator mother, is not able to love and care for that child in the warm way that a child needs.

[00:12:20.06] And as he described the course of treatment, I think as I sat there, I couldn't believe my ears. And as it went on and on into the therapy, and we examined more and more of what could be wrong with me, wrong with my personality, wrong with my spirituality, whatever-- of course I took a long look at it. And it was a lonely, very, very lonely trip.

[00:13:00.78] I started out working with children, first in pediatrics and then in child psychiatry. And I remember a social worker in the psychiatric clinic. I remember her saying to me, she said, look at some of the mothers coming in here. Look at them.

[00:13:19.39] They feel overwhelmed by the experience. Their heads are bowed. They feel hurt. They come here feeling that they're going to be judged, and that we are the ones who are going to judge them. And I still remember this.

[00:13:33.90] I remember, thank God, that at the time, I didn't feel it was important. At the time what I thought is, I'll, unfortunately, tell you. At the time I thought, why is she saying this? What is her problem that would make her talk like this?

[00:13:49.33] This is a closed, totalitarian system. If you have any reservations, or any doubts, or second thoughts, then the problem is yours. And we've got to bring you into the system of judgment, at times even accusation. This is not very nice.

[00:14:06.49] [MUSIC - HANNAH MARCUS, "TROUBLES"]

[00:14:22.52] Watch it. Over here.

[00:14:35.27] [INAUDIBLE] couch.

[00:14:39.62] I haven't seen these for a very long time. Oh, look at that. Pete, do you want to come and look?

[00:15:08.16] Yeah, why don't you?

[00:15:10.64] Hi, sweetie pie. Look at that. You know who that is? Who is that?

[00:15:21.10] That's me.

[00:15:22.57] Who?

[00:15:23.56] Me.

[00:15:29.97] When Peter was born, I was very young. I had gotten married when I was 18 years old. I think the burdens of having a child who was autistic, who was going through things I didn't understand, were really overwhelming.

[00:15:47.88] Yeah, I assume you guys were divorced by now.

[00:15:51.64] Oh, your father was out with the two of you.

[00:15:54.40] Yeah, 'cause you're not in there.

[00:15:55.79] There you are.

[00:15:57.53] My brother and I played a lot as children. I would pinch his nose, and he knew that I was teasing him. And we'd wrestle a little bit. It was a very simple, heartfelt communication. I think both my mother and I have always felt that Pete was an opportunity for us to learn about how to love somebody.

[00:16:23.02] You know, I was getting treatment as a parent with a social worker. And I had read Bettelheim. So I knew what they were looking for.

[00:16:32.54] But I remember getting the results of all of those tests, and seeing for the first time what these professionals were saying about me. And it was very, very disturbing. I was very angry when I read this stuff. The word "psychotic" was mentioned more than a couple of times.

[00:16:52.63] And that was appalling to me. As Micklar said, I was nervous, and overburdened, and things were tough. But I was not psychotic.

[00:17:08.21] A hero to me is somebody that can lay aside their own needs for another, especially over such long periods of time, somebody who acts from a place of compassion and love that transcends their self-interest. My brother needs a protector. I think that my mother feels like she's his protector in this life. So I think that she's given up a lot of her freedom for that.

[00:17:52.48] [MUSIC PLAYING]

[00:18:35.30] The first time I felt women were heroic were the mothers of autistic children. And maybe that's connected to my statues. I had not thought of that.

[00:18:56.64] Here it is, New York Times Magazine. My friend Pat called up and said, I think there's a picture of Melissa in the paper. It's about the special school she was in. I couldn't believe it at first, because I had never seen this picture. Breaks my heart.

[00:19:20.72] Such a beautiful little child, look at those eyes. And they were like blind. People used to ask me, is she blind? And she wasn't blind.

[00:19:31.09] I don't know how she saw. I think she saw spirit. I don't think she saw like we saw. One time when she was eight months old, laying in the crib, a neighbor came down, and Melissa was looking at him. And he got scared. He said, she's looking right through me. Who knew then that was autism?

[00:19:58.75] I had to watch Missy 24 hours a day. I couldn't sit still on the playground 'cause Missy would never sit still. I had to schlep Hannah with me. So Hannah couldn't make any friends.

[00:20:11.74] It was just my life. She was my older sister. And the older I got, the more I noticed other people behaving in different ways toward her. And there were always interventions happening around her. There were always strange things in the house around her.

[00:20:31.94] But Han, you must have been frightened. You must've been frightened a lot of the time, if I was frightened.

[00:20:54.47] Every three weeks, we go up to a school about 40 minutes outside of Philly. And we visit Missy.

[00:21:05.69] Missy.

[00:21:07.16] [MUSIC - HANNAH MARCUS, "GRIST FOR LOVE"]

[00:21:10.62] [CLAPPING]

[00:21:17.02] You're so excited. You're going to go home. You know who you're going to see? Yeah? With a mouth full of cookie? Oh, is that pretty. Where's your fingers?

[00:21:39.85] And she loves fun. And she loves music. She has a great sense of humor. She's so filled with love.

[00:21:51.23] Oh, is that beautiful? You're so pretty, Missy. You are so pretty.

[00:22:03.97] And you know, Missy, I think I want to see if this feels cold here to me. Her bed is too close to the window in this cold weather. I'm going to move it out. It's nice being up against the wall, but--

[00:22:22.49] Mother tends to worry.

[00:22:38.94] Ain't gonna give him a little part?

[00:22:40.83] Oh, yes.

[00:22:41.73] OK.

[00:22:43.99] Yeah, and take the beard off. He can't have any--

[00:22:49.37] Sausage.

[00:22:51.06] Not yet.

[00:22:51.80] What?

[00:22:52.46] Not yet. We've got to get this hair off of you. And Mr. Hubbard takes it off with the clippers, so you don't have bumps on you.

[00:23:02.97] I had always wanted children, but I never thought I was going to have them. So when I became pregnant with Steve, you would've thought it was the second coming of Christ.

[00:23:11.31] No razor.

[00:23:13.69] When Steven was not even two years old, I was at the library. And the librarian said something about, we have some books here. Would you like to read something on autism? And I said autism? The little things, according to this book, seemed to identify it was Steven -- the rigidity, the repetitiveness.

[00:23:39.82] The next time I was at the doctor's office, I asked if he thought Steven had autism. And it was more than one doctor at that time. It was a team of them over at the University of Illinois. And they said no, said it may be an emotional disturbance, but it's not autism.

[00:23:55.29] We did not fit their mold. We did not fit the classic mold for autism.

[00:24:01.58] Which is?

[00:24:02.36] Which is white, upper middle class, and very, very bright.

[00:24:10.65] Jimmy is an autistic child, 11 years old. His father is a specialist in nuclear power plants. Joseph is seven years old. Both of his parents are college graduates. His father is a college professor.

[00:24:27.48] It was really not a negotiable issue. According to my doctors, my son could not be autistic. I was not white, and it was assumed that I was not educated. And therefore, he was labeled "emotionally disturbed."

[00:24:42.35] Here your child has a disability that you recognize. And they said, no, you can't be that. You can't even be a refrigerator mother. The irony of it all.

[00:25:02.93] I never really thought that I would ever write a book about Bruno Bettelheim. My brother went to Bettelheim's school from 1943 until he died in 1948. When he died, my parents put the whole subject of Steven and his mental difficulties in a [? mausoleum ?] [? room. ?] It just was not talked about, ever.

[00:25:31.71] So in 1969, I was going to Chicago on an assignment for a magazine. I decided I was in town, I would go see Bettelheim. He sat there with his very thick glasses. And he just went on the attack.

[00:25:47.73] He said my father was a schlemiel who kept out of things, but my mother was a real villain. That she wanted Steven to be an intellectual, which he obviously couldn't be. And that she had rejected him, and she was responsible for all of Steven's troubles.

[00:26:01.97] But then he said, categorically, you know your brother committed suicide. Now, the facts are that I was in the barn, playing in the hay loft with my brother, on vacation one weekend in Michigan. And he slipped through a hole camouflaged by hay, and fell 35 feet to his death.

[00:26:24.42] Blaming the parents was Bettelheim's modus operandi. And if Steven committed suicide by going home against his wishes, then he could blame the parents. It fully explains why my mother shut down this topic for the rest of her life.

[00:26:41.64] [MUSIC PLAYING]

[00:26:48.11] We can start with the slides if you like. And let's turn off the light. This is the main building, where the patient first enters.

[00:27:00.05] Now, parents, do not go beyond this door, so that the long hand of the parents-- which, in many cases, were the cause of the disturbance-- cannot intrude on the new life that the children try to create for themselves.

[00:27:17.76] Next, please. And there is a figure called "The Lady." It's a huge mother figure, where the children can step on it, walk on it, lie on it, kick it. All these activities took place around this figure. Next, please.

[00:27:36.25] I was the tail end of that generation of moms that were bombarded by the Bruno Bettelheim garbage. But still I got it. And my kid was in a school that subscribed to that.

[00:27:46.93] My son Shem was born in 1975. I was practically a child bride. And when he was five months old, I made a visit to Puerto Rico to visit my mom. And my mama, she turns and she says, Maria I think something is not right.

[00:28:07.46] And I thought, well, what does my mom know? She's not a doctor. My mom had a high school education. Well, the experts should know. And the experts haven't said anything.

[00:28:19.07] [SPEAKING SPANISH]

[00:28:20.28] Can you help me water the plants, [INAUDIBLE]? One by one, Shem. Wait, wait.

[00:28:27.24] OK. I can do it.

[00:28:27.43] Get close so you can do it.

[00:28:29.02] Uh-uh.

[00:28:30.02] Hm. That doesn't look like watering plants.

[00:28:32.62] I'm going to water plants.

[00:28:33.51] You're going to water the plants.

[00:28:34.13] [SPEAKING SPANISH]

[00:28:35.57] Hey he's being genuine, all right?

[00:28:42.42] Ay, Shemi. No. No, Shemi. Shemi, Shemi.

[00:28:47.71] Ay, no.

[00:28:47.97] Oh, that's OK, Shemi. I think I'll do it myself. Thank you. OK?

[00:28:53.11] I want to do it.

[00:28:55.17] Sometimes autistic people behave like they're from another planet. And they are. And they are whole. They are whole people. They just have a different culture, a different way of communicating, a different language. To us, it might not make any sense. But logic, they do have.

[00:29:33.74] We parents can receive them, learn their language, bridge the gap.

[00:29:46.63] Uh-uh.

[00:30:39.61] When Shemi was around nine, the only school that was open, the principal had been a devout disciple of Bruno Bettelheim. So he said to me, families are the worst possible place for a human being to grow up. Therefore, we try to remove children from their parents as part of the therapeutic treatment.

[00:31:00.49] And by golly, that's exactly what they did for two years. We could not see Shem. That was the most painful experience in my life.

[00:31:08.30] I've been through loss of my health. We lost our business. I've lost my house. I went through divorce. And all those things are very painful. Nothing compares, nothing, to the poignancy of that pain.

[00:31:24.80] It was so horrifying to think of this darling little child, that you're going to separate yourself from him. But they say, well, if you don't do it-- or the way put it, if you love your child, you'll do this.

[00:31:42.20] They never showed me where he would sleep. I asked them, what are you doing with him all day? Is he in play therapy? And she said no. Does he go to school? No. Well, what are they doing all day?

[00:31:59.45] Well, there was a theory out called isolation technique. They take away the toys, any distractions, and the child would be isolated in his room. And maybe for some kinds of disturbance, it would've worked. I don't know. But for autistic child, can you imagine?

[00:32:22.96] I could just hope that somehow he was surviving the separation. What was he thinking? You would only do it under the direst of circumstances.

[00:32:33.87] I finally got him into a school at three and a half. And they diagnosed it as autism. And the director of the school was black. So she wasn't buying that it was limited to the middle-class white people.

[00:32:52.12] But what she was buying into, to some degree, was a cold mother syndrome. It was just the cold, black mothers joined the cold, white mothers.

[00:33:06.07] Bettelheim tried to cure these kids. But he didn't have a technique to do it, because, as we know now, it's a neurological disorder. And it is not something that you can apply a Freudian technique to and cure.

[00:33:24.01] But because he got a lot of money from the Ford Foundation, he had to keep producing these reports, saying that he was making progress, or he wouldn't get the next dollop of money. And he did not change his views about autism, despite evidence that began to accumulate in the mid '60s.

[00:33:44.73] In 1964, Bernard Rimland, whose wife had given birth to a child who turned out to be autistic, published a really breakthrough book called Infantile Autism.

[00:33:57.71] To me, the world is a big puzzle, to an experimental psychologist. So when autism hit in our family, I put that skill into the service of this cause.

[00:34:08.43] Very good, isn't it?

[00:34:10.32] It sure is.

[00:34:12.40] I was appalled to find that everything I read pointed to the mother as the cause of the problem. They would give cases of a mother that they said was hostile. But of course, I wondered, was that mother hostile before they blamed her, or after?

[00:34:26.13] In my book on autism, I tried to articulate as carefully as possible each of the arguments for psychological causation, and each of the arguments for biological causation. And I came to the conclusion that it's extremely unlikely that the psychological environment-- mother's treatment of the child, for example-- has any particular bearing.

[00:34:47.92] In 1964, Bernard Rimland published a book saying that autism had a physical cause, it did not have a psychological cause. And that was the first turnaround.

[00:34:59.79] Bettelheim dismissed it out of hand. And he had the highest visibility. When somebody in some small town went to a therapist and said, I think my child has autism, often they would take their cue from Bettelheim. So the message that parents still got was that they were in fact responsible.

[00:35:23.01] I was asked by the book review editor to write about Bettelheim. And what I knew about him was that he was working with children otherwise ignored or shunted aside by many people like me. And I thought that was heroic.

[00:35:42.15] History teaches us our mistakes. I was brought up in a tradition of psychoanalytic, psychiatry, psychology, whatever. And not only was I brought up in that tradition, but the whole medical profession assented to this.

[00:36:00.56] We call this the conscious mind. You know everything that takes place up here. But you don't know a thing at what takes place down here in the unconscious.

[00:36:08.57] Ever since your childhood, you've tried to run away from something.

[00:36:11.71] In the '40s and early '50s, psychoanalysis was central to even the popular culture. It was in the ether everywhere.

[00:36:20.37] Don't let's go into that again. I will not be psychoanalyzed.

[00:36:22.89] Oh, now, Jill, that's a very middle-class attitude.

[00:36:26.55] This was the moment of the Oedipus complex. You wanted to sleep with your mother and kill your father. It was all family oriented.

[00:36:34.88] Maybe you've got something you want to tell me. A single thought, a few words in the corner of your head.

[00:36:40.33] So if a man comes along with a Viennese accent and says, your parents are responsible for this autism, it makes a kind of logical sense in that atmosphere.

[00:36:52.61] We were in therapy for about five years. I discovered that I was supposed to, at some point, have had some difficulty with my parents. And he tried to make me believe that my father was disappointed in me because I was not a red-haired boy.

[00:37:15.02] Well, sure he took me to baseball games. And I liked them. I knew that my father was not disappointed in me. And I knew he loved me.

[00:37:25.32] I tried to believe that he was a bad father. I really tried. And I tried to believe that my mother didn't love me. I really tried. But I looked back, and I thought, I had a pretty good childhood. I was a happy child.

[00:37:46.85] His reply was the fact that I was an only child made me forever in the middle, the peacemaker. And so my personality didn't develop. That was the crux of the whole thing, that I was not as loving as I should be, because I really didn't have much of a self-esteem or much personality.

[00:38:18.03] My psychiatrist would ask me why I didn't want Chris to play in the toilet. Why would you mind him playing in the toilet, Mrs. Flanigan? How do you answer a question like that? I felt like saying, do your children play in the toilet? How many hours do your children play in the toilet?

[00:38:33.35] But the fact that I had an autistic child, and it was OK for him to play in the toilet, it must have had something to do with having to get out that Freudian need to communicate with the toilet. I don't know.

[00:38:45.45] You were on the judgment seat, as a mother. And he was your judge. He was your prosecutor. He was everything. He was going to send you to mother hell because you made his kid to be autistic.

[00:39:06.53] There was a point where I really understand people that commit suicide. And I'm not that type.

[00:39:18.83] I've got a lot of life spirit, and a lot of energy, and a lot of creative energy. And I could create out of anything. Give me a piece of string on the floor, or a rubber band, and I'll make something. And I could look at the sky and be happy.

[00:39:31.44] But I'd get up in the morning, and the only reason I lived was to keep my children alive. That was the only reason.

[00:39:40.95] [MUSIC PLAYING]

[00:39:51.39] I really had more faith in God than I did in the doctor. And when my husband could see what was happening to me, and he said this is enough. We're not going back. So we didn't.

[00:40:07.67] And she didn't go back. And she was eight. And we made the decision, he and I, we're just going to love her. To heck with the doctors. And that's what we did.

[00:40:19.64] And here, he's home again. It ended very abruptly. They said the funding is gone, or something like that. And all a sudden I was a wonderful mother, and I should take him home.

[00:40:32.86] I said no, he can't be a part of that program, no. I simply do not want him to-- I am his mother. And I want to be his mother. And I don't think that he's going to benefit by being taken away from me five days a week.

[00:40:50.52] [MUSIC PLAYING]

[00:40:55.82] This is Eve, accused of being evil because she took the apple from the Tree of Life. Eve was the first woman to have a baby. She was the first woman to get pregnant. And here's something growing inside of her. And it has to come out.

[00:41:15.33] No obstetrician to ask. Adam doesn't know what's going on. So the snake is offering her information. And there's nothing wrong with taking information.

[00:41:36.83] Real research into the cause of autism only started in the last five years. Chris was born in the dark ages, and we're now in the period of enlightenment. But it's never enough. There are never enough good schools, never enough properly trained teachers.

[00:41:54.38] Hey Chris, would you like a peanut?

[00:41:57.44] And it takes working with the political system, working with the educational system, setting up programs. I became an activist because I wanted to help set the record straight, wanted to help my child. It doesn't get better for your own child if it doesn't get better for everybody.

[00:42:16.85] And nobody knows these children better than the parents who've lived with them 24 hours a day. So I would always tell the parents when they would call an information referral, nobody knows that child better than you. And don't let anybody tell you you don't.

[00:42:30.58] Come on, let's crisscross. And then we're going right straight down the line.

[00:42:36.52] When Steven goes to the auto show, looking at the cars is not as important to him as collecting the information on every car at the show. And if we miss any cars, we've got to go back.

[00:42:50.29] [HONKING]

[00:42:50.78] Oh, don't put your hands on anything. Just lean back.

[00:42:56.26] And we have a rule, no more than two books.

[00:42:58.97] Two calendars.

[00:42:59.95] Absolutely. Here you go.

[00:43:07.40] Remember that's for at school.

[00:43:08.99] Oh, you like that?

[00:43:09.56] Yeah, remember that's for at school.

[00:43:11.20] Yeah, don't be messing with it if it doesn't belong to you.

[00:43:13.23] Leave it alone.

[00:43:14.03] Leave it alone. If it doesn't belong to you, what do you do?

[00:43:16.78] Leave it alone.

[00:43:17.18] Leave it alone. What is this?

[00:43:20.34] If it happened now, it would not be as easy for them to do that to me. Because I know much more than I knew then. I have far more freedom than I had then.

[00:43:38.24] Now I'm a senior citizen. I'm a retired person. I have very little to lose, and I've got a lot of time on my hands. And I would not take it lying down.

[00:43:56.42] And I have fought this battle of bitterness within my soul. Because I didn't find out for 18 years that I wasn't at fault for sure. And I can't quite overcome it. I've tried.

[00:44:21.79] I've taken a lot of classes, took everything they offered. I worked at the church for five years. And that was very satisfying. And I am not very good, but I paint a little bit. I read.

[00:44:48.41] But there is no answer to this place inside my soul. That's my soul. I can't get down there and take it out. I just can't. It's there. And it is simply a result of the analysis.

[00:45:20.67] There it is.

[00:45:22.67] See it? Uh-huh.

[00:45:23.55] This is the right color.

[00:45:25.23] Yes.

[00:45:27.44] [INAUDIBLE] working on me? [INAUDIBLE] working on me?

[00:45:31.93] [? Librium. ?] [? Librium. ?]

[00:45:34.79] The [? Librium's ?] working on me?

[00:45:36.58] Say it again, [? Librium. ?]

[00:45:38.78] [? Librium's ?] working on me?

[00:45:40.05] You've got it.

[00:45:43.41] Oh, there's guppies, like we used to have.

[00:45:46.64] [INAUDIBLE]

[00:45:48.03] Over there.

[00:45:48.93] Where's the guppies?

[00:45:50.10] Right next to the sign that says, "Peaceful."

[00:45:55.17] Peaceful guppies? The guppies?

[00:45:59.46] I think guppies. I think they are.

[00:46:03.95] Guppies? Guppies?

[00:46:08.44] [MUSIC PLAYING]

[00:46:13.43] Peter, I need you to help me. Can you help me? Can you help Mommy? Would you put these in the freezer? On top.

[00:46:31.89] At one point, when I was planning to start my business, I had gotten a commercial stove. And Peter went downstairs really quietly one night. And he turned on the stove, which, it turned out, we found out later, misfired. And he set his pajamas on fire.

[00:46:57.54] I found him in the dining room, silent throughout the whole thing. And his chest was totally, totally, burned. His pajamas were in tatters, walking back and forth.

[00:47:29.20] (WHISPERING) That's a boy. OK. That's it.

[00:47:34.63] During the time that Peter went through burn treatment, I had a very good experience with doctors. The doctors were very willing to work with me on Peter's diet.

[00:47:46.43] Pour some in mine, as well.

[00:47:49.99] There were other things that were very tricky because of Peter's autism, but the doctors there were wonderful.

[00:47:56.27] (WHISPERING) Put the cap back on, OK? Put the cap back on.

[00:47:59.93] They understood that I was more of an expert on Peter than they were. That was a good experience for me, seeing the other side of the medical profession.

[00:48:15.05] And this kind of collaboration is so important for us, a collaboration of peers. Patients have an enormous amount to teach us. Their families have an enormous amount to teach us.

[00:48:36.30] I don't know how long I'm going to be walking around the Earth.

[00:48:40.01] Hi, Paul. How are you?

[00:48:43.11] And I want to leave Paul in the best possible condition that I can.

[00:48:48.01] You want to get your coat?

[00:48:50.66] The group homes, I think, have the best answer for these adult autistics.

[00:48:56.82] Well, we'll be back about 3:30, I guess.

[00:49:00.16] If we could only have more group homes, and get decent salaries. But the states are just shutting their eyes to this problem.

[00:49:09.92] OK, we'll see you later.

[00:49:10.95] OK.

[00:49:11.45] The last five years have seen an explosion in autism. And now we know that there has to be an organic reason for it. There are many theories, but none of them are saying that the mother did it. And that's a great relief to everybody.

[00:49:31.47] OK, you want to watch television for a while?

[00:49:35.42] I see him every Sunday.

[00:49:37.68] Which one? You want that one? Or you want to do "Puff"? Who's that guy?

[00:49:44.38] Puff.

[00:49:44.86] Puff the Magic--

[00:49:45.99] Dragon.

[00:49:46.48] [MUSIC - PETER YARROW, "PUFF THE MAGIC DRAGON"]

[00:49:53.73] And when you hear the attention he pays to the words of these songs that mean so much to him, it's like he's trying to communicate certain things to me. He wants me to listen to these words, which were very meaningful. And I said yes, I hear, I understand that, Paul.

[00:50:15.91] In an ordinary house was a boy in whose head was locked an untold story.

[00:50:25.09] [CLEARING THROAT]

[00:50:25.96] We have concluded our consultation. And being of one mind--

[00:50:30.59] The best in all medicine, may we add.

[00:50:33.08] We have come to the conclusion that your son will not, nor cannot--

[00:50:38.29] Speak, communicate, nor indeed--

[00:50:40.92] Relate in any way to the world around him.

[00:50:44.90] Can't you give us some hope?

[00:50:46.75] Alas, the case is hopeless.

[00:50:51.35] That's the thing that's so tantalizing about this, that sometimes you'll see a flash. And for the moment, he is cognizant of everything. And I say, oh my god, there's really somebody in there, you know? And then it vanishes. But I see him for just that instant.

[00:51:10.41] Am I all better?

[00:51:12.53] Well, we'll see. To be truly better, you must make a journey with me.

[00:51:18.91] But where are we going?

[00:51:26.36] Occasionally I will have a dream about Paul, and he's with the family. And he's just speaking in a normal fashion. And we're just all very happy. So you kind of try not to forget that dream and hang onto it a bit, you know?

[00:51:43.19] And someday, sooner or later, I will see Paul as he is, his real self.

[00:51:54.68] [MUSIC - HANNAH MARCUS, "GRIST FOR LOVE"]