Alex

Today’s post is by Jeff Stimpson, author of the books Alex: The Fathering of a Preemie and Alex the Boy: Episodes From a Family’s Life With Autism. Hear more from Jeff and his wife, Jill Cornfield, on their fantastic blog, AutismVox.

Last Halloween, my son Alex (then 10) kept trying to dash into other people’s apartments when they opened their door at little brother Ned’s “trick or treat!” Alex would crane his neck, hunch his shoulders, then bolt like a top NFL draft pick straight toward the costliest-looking breakable thing he could spot inside. “No, Alex, no! You don’t live here, and these people don’t need you poking around!” And they were nice, but no, they didn’t need that.

We trick-or-treat in a 15-story apartment building, then we go downtown to grandpa’s apartment building and do three or four floors there, then Alex and I usually bag it (ha ha) and head back home to hand out candy. He and I have never joined Jill, Ned and many of the other kids in our building in going to the rest home across the street – just as we don’t do many other special things during the year after reaching what I think is the outer borders of Alex’s autism.

Jill claims Halloween has become a much bigger deal than when we were kids, and she wonders if that could be “because we’ve all become Halloween-mad, or because of the kids or because autism makes it a bit of a project.” The project a costume becomes when we must wiggle Alex into one. Alex has been a cowboy, skateboarder dude and a mad doctor to typically developing Ned’s Frankenstein. Ned toyed this year with being a ghost from Charlie Brown, with dozens of holes “accidentally” cut in his sheet. “Alex would think that’s hysterical!” Jill says.

Late last year, coincidentally, my wife Jill read that Alex’s behavior is not only common, but understandable. “It’s weird, when you think about it,” Jill pointed out. “Somebody opens their door for you, but then you don’t go into their house!” It’s like when we took Alex to grandpa’s lake house for the first time but forgot the boys’ swimwear, or maybe it was too early in the season and the water was still too cold – I don’t remember – but Alex saw the dock and the lake and tried to go in with just his pants’ legs rolled up a little. Who comes to a lake and doesn’t go in the water? Who doesn’t go into an apartment when someone opens the door? Some of this candy is chocolate I recognize and that’s good, but what on earth are these red things, and what’s this chewy stuff?

Sometimes, I can see where Halloween is weird in ways its originators never intended. Like much about Alex’s behavior almost since the instant he was born, it makes sense if I can only get a moment to think about it.

For tips on Halloween for kids with autism:

One Place for Special Needs: Links to such stuff as the Charlie Brown characters readying for Halloween; child safely tips; and more.

Autismsupport.org has instructions and advice on how to make a Halloween costume for a child with sensory integration dysfunction.

Kimmy Krocker has posted a fun YouTube video of herself making gluten-free, casein-free Halloween sugar cookies. Classy touch: She runs part of Bernard Herrmann’s theme from Psycho.