Yet there was a general forward motion that helped us bear setbacks. As Elly approached four she abandoned doll play altogether and resisted all attempts to lure her back to it. But other things took its place. The new ability to joke and tease did not disappear. She spilled water on me on purpose, and laughed. She turned the light off while we sat at supper. Teasing is not an autistic activity.
We were able to establish a few reciprocal games — ones in which Elly too must play her part. Elly, who six months before would lackadaisically roll a ball back to you from twelve inches away, would now retrieve it with enthusiasm if you threw it several yards. Out on the wide college lawns, I could now do as I had delighted to do with the other children — crouch down and hold out my arms while a small, laughing creature came running from fifty feet away to end in my embrace. At two, Elly had played ring-around-the-rosy with me alone, for I could take both hands and make her dance; at three she would accept other members of the family in the circle; eight months later she included strangers — indeed, she accosted passers-by and peremptorily forced them to join the game. It was no longer difficult to introduce her to baby-sitters. I would place her in her swing, station the new girl to face her, and myself stand behind and push. The repeated, predictable approach and retreat seemed to operate as a model of a manageable human relationship, one from which she could always withdraw, as the swing would always swing back. For years I made sure that there was always someone in front of her when she swung. I looked for activities that could be made reciprocal. Elly looked on while I made beds. She liked to see me cover the pillows; she would motion me to pick them up. It was not hard, it turned out, to move her hands and so teach her to pick the pillows up herself and bring them to me — a beginning of training in giving which inside a year would make it possible for me to say ‘bring me’ and expect a response. Everything worked together. Speech, comprehension, use of the hands, social relationships developed inseparably. Everything fed into everything else. As time went on, Elly remained strange. In some ways she got stranger. But she lived more nearly among us than ever before.
One day, the month she was four, her brother flopped down on a bed. Elly — who had not put a doll to bed for six full months — gently covered him over with a blanket. My eyes filled. That was what all that had been for.
A few weeks later we were back at the drawing work. I made a circle and gave the crayon to Elly. With faint yet certain strokes she put four marks inside it: eyes, nose, mouth. Casually yet unmistakably she made a body and scratched in arms and legs. Elly, whose eyes six months before could not see pictures, whose hands had been too weak to press down a crayon, had drawn, not a triangle or an E, but a human being.
She drew another the next day, this time supplying the circular head herself. She drew it in the sandpile with a stick; she scratched it out at once. I would wait many months before Elly drew again. But I could remember this.
8. In the Family
This, then, was Elly, from babyhood until she was four. This is what she did and what we did with her. I have put down almost everything. So empty are the days of an autistic child that it is possible in a hundred or so pages to set out nearly the full content of the most concentrated and fertile years of a normal child’s experience. In the midst of our noisy, active household here was this cipher, this little island of detached simplicity, living its life, and we with our lives to live around it.
I knew the question so welclass="underline" ‘But isn’t it hard on the other children?’ It is hard on the other children. In the first bad years it was very hard indeed. ‘Why doesn’t Elly talk?’ ‘I was younger than that when I talked, wasn’t I?’ ‘Is Elly going to be retarded?’ It is hard for children to sense that something is wrong and have no inkling of what it is, not even the security of a name to give it. Why didn’t Elly talk? We could not give them answers we did not have ourselves.
It was hard to be looked through by the pretty baby they were so ready to play with and love. It was hard for a little boy six and little girls nine and ten to put all their minds to choosing a Christmas present for their two-year-old sister’s first real Christmas and know that in all probability she wouldn’t look at it or them. It was hard to learn to be aggressive and yet not too aggressive, to know when to tickle and when to stop. Sara, whose baby Elly had been from birth, had a kind of self- confidence stemming from this special relationship. She was also the eldest, a poised, omnicompetent child. It was easier for her to take the initiative than for the less assertive Rebecca, or for Matthew, who was not so far out of babyhood himself. Sara could get Elly to look at her. She was a good tickler, a good picker-upper. The younger children found it harder to press in where they were not wanted. So Elly noticed Sara more than she noticed them. But she did not notice any of them much. To take the initiative and be rebuffed is terribly painful. In differing degrees all shared that pain.
But children get used to being ignored — they have plenty of other things on their minds besides whether their baby sister is interested in them. If Elly gave nothing, she demanded nothing. She did not occupy a very important position in their lives. It seemed to us that for the time being this was as it should be. If she ignored them, they could ignore her too. Our task at this point was to see that the few ways in which she impinged on them should be, if not actually pleasant, at least neutral. Later they would have to learn to accept the inconvenience and embarrassment that any abnormal child brings. Acceptance would grow of itself as Elly and they grew together. But we could act now to minimize inconvenience and embarrassment.
We had decided — or, rather, we had never questioned — that Elly was to live with us, to benefit, we hoped, from surroundings of warmth and love. From that choice, certain things must follow.
If love was to be her therapy, it must be possible to find her lovable. At first we might be able to do no more than ensure that she not be hatable. That would be a beginning; for the children’s sakes, our sakes, and her own, we must do what we could to make sure of that. No one can be expected to love a child whatever it does, least of all its brothers and sisters.
If Elly was to live with us, we could not allow her to be destructive, dirty, or repellent in her personal habits. The children’s possessions, and ours, must be safe. We must be able to take her to restaurants and public places. The family had enough to bear from Elly without having in addition to be ashamed of her behaviour or appearance.
It was our good luck that Elly was pretty. Or perhaps it was more than luck; physical attractiveness, like good health, is one of the inexplicable items in the syndrome of infantile autism, and this makes the family’s burden lighter. The world is unfair, and in a pretty child people will overlook a great deal. We kept Elly’s yellow hair washed and brushed (against considerable opposition), her nose and mouth wiped, her fingers unsticky. We saw to it that her clothes were attractive. When she spilled food down the front (less often, as I have said, than normal children) we sponged or changed her dress. There was no danger of conveying an exaggerated fastidiousness to Elly. She was fastidious already. Perhaps it would have been more ‘natural’ or ‘healthy’ if she had been relaxed enough to like being dirty, but she did not. It might be a sign of her pathology, but since it made things easier we might as well be glad of it.