What I did for my autistic son (a true story)

by a father, the forgotten man in the story

The first child in my third marriage, a son, showed signs of a problem even as an infant. As he grew older, many so-called specialists said that he had ADHD and prescribed drugs like Ritalin and Neuleptil (In the US, Periciazine) to calm him down. However, those drugs had disastrous effects on him. Because I was working as a freelance journalist at the time, a friend with the Jerusalem Post gave me the name and phone number of an American diagnostic pediatrician who specialized in behavioral disorders. I called and made an appointment with him. He was in a suburb north of Tel Aviv while we lived in a suburb to the south of Tel Aviv, so it was a long trip to get to him. He was not in network in our health plan, so I paid out of pocket for the visit, but it turned out to be very much worthwhile. He spent two hours with my son, doing all sorts of activities with him. When he finished, he said, "I feel for you. You did nothing wrong. He was damaged goods the day he was born." He then said that he was not hyperactive. Instead, he said that he had a "Pervasive Developmental Disorder, something from the world of autism." I had never heard of that term before, so when I got home, I went online to investigate. We were still in Israel, and the only online service there at the time was Compuserve, so I went into the Compuserve database to ask about the disorder. I saw three articles in a search. Two of them told me a few things about the disorder that did not relate to my son's problem. However, the third one described Asperger's Syndrome; when I read about it, it described my son perfectly: a child of high intelligence who nonetheless displayed symptoms of autism. My son spoke three languages (English, Hebrew, Yiddish) and was so intelligent that when he was placed in what was called a "therapeutic center" for kindergarten where the children in kindergarten sat in desks and were taught first grade curriculum, my son amazed the teachers completely as he aced first grade and was even progressing into second-grade subjects. The idea was that the children who would do that would be able the next year to enter first grade in a normal class in a regular school; in the case of my son, I was told that putting him in first grade would not be beneficial and that he was able to go to second grade with no problem.

Well, as the story goes on, he continued to be a problem when he was in school; he was smart enough to do all the work, but he had a discipline problem when in class. He was placed in a special education class with children of many different disorders, and that had a very negative effect on him. I appealed to the Ministry of Education and Culture, the Israeli department that oversees the educational system, and requested that he be given a facilitator to sit with him in class so he could go into a normal class. Because of his high intelligence, my appeal was denied. High-functioning autism was a concept that was not known nor accepted in Israel at that time. My son needed to get out of that special education class, so I found someone who would sit with him in a regular class, and I paid out of pocket to keep him. Needless to say, that was very costly and soon I had a huge debt.

My son was referred to an after-school program for special needs children; what I was not told was that "special needs" referred to children from low-income families, so it was a bad match for my son. At the end of the school year, the woman who ran the program sent a letter saying that he had drawn on the walls and that we would have to pay for repainting. She also added that he had "very severe behavioral problems." That was bad news enough, but he had never done anything like that before. I asked him why he did it. He was rather ashamed because he had been scolded so many times for doing inappropriate things, but finally he blurted out that he was tired of being locked every day in a storage closet! I notified the social worker for my district in the city. "I do the same thing with my children," she replied. It was clear to me that I had to find help from elsewhere.

I need to jump back to 1996, when my brother in New York died of AIDS; his partner died on January 1 and he died on February 15. On the anniversary of his death in 1997, I flew to the US to be with my father for the annual memorial service for my brother. (I will skip what happened in the visit because that memory is another story.) My father lived in North Carolina where I was born and raised. While I was there, I called an institution in neighboring Chapel Hill known as Division TEACCH, I spoke with the director, who turned out to be the former president of the synagogue in Durham, the city in which I grew up. He was familiar with the educational system in Israel. When I told him about my son, he immediately assured me that I would not find a better place for giving my son the treatment that he needed than with his institution and in the school system in that city. Because I had lived in that city for the first 18 years of my life and remembered the city as a tobacco-and-textile town, I was hearing something that sounded very much alien for that region. He told me that the teachers in the schools were well-versed in my son's disorder and that there was abundant support in that area. I heard enough to decide that my son needed to come there.

When I returned to Israel, it turned out that what my son had endured reached the ears of another journalist that I had known. She worked for Yediot Aharonot, one of the biggest Hebrew-language daily newspapers. She came to our home with a photographer and interviewed us. Many photos were taken. After a week, a three-page article appeared in the magazine section Al Hasharon in the Friday edition of that newspaper telling about the very complicated and terrible life my son had experienced because of his disability, including what that woman in the after-school had done to him. His name was changed, and his face was masked because he was a minor, but one photograph had him sitting next to me and I was very easy to identify. When that article appeared, it marked us as Public Enemy Number One. Storekeepers wouldn't wait on us, Cashiers in the supermarkets refused to deal with us. Our neighbors avoided us. We, the parents, were summoned to our son's school where we were REPRIMANDED for talking to the press! Shortly thereafter, he was invited to a Hanukkah party where the children beat him up.

I can barely tell this story even to this day. When I picked him up from the party, he asked me, "Will I ever be a normal boy?" I said to him, "You're a special boy." He then continued, "I know, but will I ever be normal?" Even now when I tell that story, I feel my eyes fill with tears. What was a bigger surprise was when he got home, went to his mother, and said, "Daddy's going to take me to America to save my life. He can cook and clean the way you do. He will take care of me. In the summer, you can come with my sister to America. We will all be a family together in America. Mama, don't worry; it's going to be all right." His mother was speechless, something very out of character for her. I had seen and heard enough; I called for tickets to travel to North Carolina.

I have to add now that his Israeli mother hated him because of his disability. She cursed him every day, saying, "You're my punishment! I did something wrong, and God gave you to me!" She even threatened to desert us, to leave him alone with me and go elsewhere. She said these things in his presence and added many insulting remarks. I remembered how my parents had hated me and proved to me over the years how I was nothing but a burden to them and how they said I "took the joy out of living," so I wasn't about to let my son feel that nobody loved him. I had to be the one parent who cared about him and saw to it that he received proper treatment. When I announced that I was taking him for treatment, she didn't give a fuck about him. Instead, she sat around moaning how her marriage was trash and how she didn't deserve to be stuck with such losers. She was anything but supportive when it came to taking him for treatment in another country.

Once we were in the US and in North Carolina, we went to the home of my father and stepmother, but soon we saw we were in enemy territory. I won't go into that story, but it was very obvious that we were not welcome. My father even said to me, "You'd better take him back. You can't handle him and nobody here's gonna love him." Eventually, however, I found work and moved with him into an apartment in Chapel Hill. I enrolled him in a school and had a long talk with the principal and the assistant principal of his school; they had much experience in dealing with autistic children. He had been in the fourth grade in Israel, but we were coming in the middle of the year. It was decided that he should be put in fourth grade there as well and if there were problems, he could repeat the grade in the next year. They heard the whole sad story, but he was dealing with people who did not reject him.

I took him to Division TEACCH a few days later. He was re-evaluated and the diagnosis of Asperger's Syndrome was confirmed. I couldn't restrain myself; it made me cry to hear that. At least I knew that my son would get what he needed there. They also told me about different key people and organizations that could provide help to us.

There's a lot to tell and it's hard for me to relive all that to write, but the good news is that my son finished fourth grade successfully, even though he had done half in Israel and the other half in Chapel Hill. His intelligence was obvious from the start. It's true that he had grown up with English, but he was unfamiliar with the southern accent because I lost mine long before I moved to Israel. He had some difficulty at first, but he eventually managed, and the school staff was very supportive. I was told about a project in North Carolina called the Community Alternative Program (CAP) that is funded by NC Medicaid. It is a program that supports autistics and covers all their medical, dental, therapeutic, and prescription expenses 100%. My son was accepted, so all the help that he so badly needed was provided by professionals totally free of charge. He was registered as an adult even though he was only nine, so he was assured coverage for the rest of his life.

I will stop with the story here. I just wanted you to know what I did for my son. I did the right thing for a child who needed a supportive parent. He will turn 37 on December 15 and is functioning as an adult in every sense. There is much, much more to the story, especially the misandry that was shoved in my face during my third divorce and having to face a misandrist caseworker whose report to the court mentioned all the references my ex-wife had given her but did not bother to contact even one of my references; that’s what family courts in the United States laughingly call “justice.” I did write a novel that was published on August 14, 2021, and is on Amazon about the hellish years that followed the divorce in 2003. I leave it to you to decide if you want to read that or not; as I have seen proven before my eyes, if there’s a gender that is oppressed, it’s not the one that makes a profession about spewing vitriol and marches in the streets with signs that say “Kill All Men.” What is glaringly absent is the sight of men marching in the streets with signs that say “Kill All Women,” but since when has gender equality ever been more than a myth in reality?