Vicky Burani (Bistolaridis)

“The book promoted no theories of autism causation and promised no astonishing recovery. The climax of the story was quite different: in the middle of one of Nat’s inexplicable storms of laughter, Susan realized that, even in his most difficult moments, he was trying to communicate with her. “He was looking at me warmly,” she wrote. “Now my throat was burning—this had cracked me wide open. Oh my God. He really does it to connect with us. Just doesn’t know how, other than to annoy us.” Her insight proved to be a pivotal moment for the whole family: “My epiphany about Nat’s laughter would mark a profound, positive change in how we dealt with Nat and how he responded to us.”
― Steve Silberman, NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity

“Harro could not only perform complex mathematical operations in his head, he was an avid reader who had a vivid and original way of talking about things. Asked to compare the words fly and butterfly, he launched into an etymological reverie: “The butterfly is colorful and the fly is black. The butterfly has big wings so that two flies could go underneath one wing. But the fly is much more skillful and can walk up the slippery glass and up the wall . . . The microscope explains how the fly can walk up the wall: just yesterday I saw it has teeny weeny claws on the feet and at the ends tiny little hooks.” But Harro was failing in school, because he was very disruptive in class, like Fritz. He would crawl around on all fours and announce that a lesson was “far too stupid” for him. He rarely did his homework, and if a teacher gave him a makeup assignment, he would sneer, “I wouldn’t dream of doing this.” He spent his days immersed in the books he loved, a stranger to the children around him.”
― Steve Silberman, NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity