Walking and Talking with Ralph Savarese

Newton’s first law of motion states:

Every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it.

Allow me to interpret this law in regard to my son Charlie who is rarely “at rest” as in “sitting still.” (Even when Charlie is sitting, his fingers or head or other part of his body are often mildly jittering.) Charlie does not so much lie on a bed as (except when he is soundly asleep) roll and kick and bounce. We long ago figured out that he learns best when his sitting at his desk is intermixed with moving around the room, whether running a straight circuit out the garage door and into the driveway and back, or sprawling stomach-down on a big exercise ball and rolling around, or riding his scooter. After all, the disciples of the philosopher Aristotle were called the Peripatetics, which means those who walk, wander, meander: Aristotle was said to walk in the peripatoi, “covered walkways,” while discoursing with his students.

While I rather suspect that Aristotle was not thinking of the beneficial effects of exercise on his students’ education (though training in gymnastics was thought essential for the development of mind as well as body among the ancient Greeks), being in motion rather than being at rest has often seemed to stoke more language, easier learning, even just more peaceful easy-feeliness in Charlie. When I was expecting Charle, I could feel him moving so much in utero that I often lost count; I well remember how my stomach would arch and then be smoothed out as Charlie stretched over backwards and then curled up again (with fluttering kicks).

So when Ralph Savarese, author of the recently published Reasonable People: A Memoir of Autism and Adoption, noted to me today that he and his wife put words up around the trampoline so that his son DJ could work on his reading skills while in motion (and while shooting a basket from time to time), I thought, “well of course.” Jim and I have long noted that Charlie often talks more while riding his bike; swimming and long walks have similar good effects (and help Charlie to get to sleep more readily). Charlie and I had taken the train into New York and met Ralph, and walked up 9th Avenue from 36th street up to the campus of Fordham University to meet Jim. Charlie hung back at first—we were walking a new route in the city, and without Jim, and it was summery hot and sticky—-and grew more at ease after getting a soda and encountering, and walking past, some dogs.

Ralph was interviewed on WNBC on Friday evening and his enthusiasm and warmth about his son and his family, about literacy, and about fostering a positive message about autism are apparent in this video (which also contains footage of Ralph’s son DJ typing). He and I talked about his book, DJ’s getting straight A’s in school, facilitated communication, inclusion (DJ is fully included in his public school in Iowa), his references in the book to psychoanalysis,. Charlie had not met Ralph before (though earlier this week he took my copy of Reasonable People and put it beside his bed); it always takes Charlie some time to learn to hear a new person’s voice and he wandered ahead and looked back at us when we came to an intersection. And, being a boy who prefers motion, Charlie was soon again odd walking amid the crowds and sometimes roar of buses and cars until I (call me the external force) directed him to stop and wait at the next intersection.

As many a parent of an autistic child (children) can attest, having a conversation with another adult with one’s child along for the talk can involve some maneuvering. Walking made talking possible this afternoon.

As Ralph said in his WNBC interview, “There’s hope and there’s possibility”—and from reading about DJ, and from our life with Charlie, I know that this is too, too true.