Risperdal is an antipsychotic that balances moods in autistic people, and Leo takes it to help with his irritability. However, there are still glimmers of the family’s heavily pathologizing past, namely their use of Risperdal. It was good to see their journey from wanting to separate autism from Leo to helping him live his best life. A book about viewing autistic children as whole children and working with their differences instead of attacking them also contributed to the family’s turning point.

Shannon started giving Leo a special diet and was even considering chelation for him because she thought it would “make him normal”, only stopping when Craig, Leo’s father, questioned the science of the procedures. This narrative matches old folktales about changelings, and I find it fascinating that it has reincarnated itself in modern parents’ minds. Leo’s mother, Shannon, fell into the trap of seeing autism as an evil spirit that had taken her son away, and that came from reading horror stories about autistic kids. I think the answer is that the media is full of scare tactics about autism. Why do our harmless repetitive actions scare people? Please don’t do that,” and I find it so confusing why someone would think this was a scary thing to witness. There is one diary entry of Catherine Maurice describing her daughter Anne-Marie’s stimming with puzzle pieces that ends with “Oh please baby. Is it restricting a stim, or finding a way to strike a balance with Leo so they don’t develop a straw-shaped leak in their wallets? Silberman says of stimming, “When non-autistic people do it, it’s called fidgeting and it’s rarely considered pathological.” I would like to add that stimming is only pathological for autistic people when NTs treat it as such. Leo’s family limit him by only letting have green straws at certain times throughout the day, and I wasn’t quite sure how I felt about this. Silberman’s explanations of echolalia and stimming are pretty good, casually explaining how Leo plays with green straws and wedges himself between the wall and the stairway railing.

I appreciated the inclusion of the incident where Leo echoed a swear word, which taught his mother to never speak as if he wasn’t there, because he hears and understands everything. For perspective, Carly Fleischmann’s story was publicized in 2012, and her way of communicating by typing was considered rare and revolutionary at the time. I am of the opinion that speech should not be the end goal for all autistic people, but AAC was probably not as well-known in 2015 as it is now.

His family encourages him to practice his speech by asking questions, which I thought was okay, but not the greatest. Leo is what we might call semi-speaking, using mostly echolalia and short phrases to communicate. In Chapter 2, we meet Leo, an 11-year-old autistic boy from California.

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