Frame This

Yesterday I asked on the ScienceBlogs Book Club about how we can frame vaccines to combat what seems to be widespread public ignorance, or at least uncertainty, about what causes autism and what autism is.

So how about this for a message for what autism is?

Yes, that’s my son Charlie off on a bike ride. Jim was standing behind me as I took the photo: Jim’s quite able to pedal really fast and catch up to Charlie (who’s able to pedal really really fast himself). We’re not trying to push our luck with Charlie riding his bike in the street but one thing has becoming more and more apparent:

Riding the bike has taught Charlie about stop signs and stopping at them, about cars and stopping for them, about looking both ways before you dive into an intersection, about traffic. About why running into an intersection is something you just don’t do.

Learning to ride a bike has had a lot to do with teaching Charlie some essential skills of independence. It’s given him freedom of movement, a freedom that I hope will last him for his whole life. It’s not looking too likely that Charlie will be a candidate for learning to drive, so, besides taking public transportation and hoofing it, riding a bike is going to be Charlie’s main means of taking himself places.

I’ve recounted some of our first adventures teaching Charlie to ride his bike here and mentioned some of how Jim taught Charlie to ride a bike here. Charlie started on a tricycle and then moved up to a two-wheeler with training wheels. Jim first tried to take off one training wheel in a high school parking lot when Charlie was about 5-going-on-6, but Charlie wasn’t ready. The next year, Jim took off both training wheels and, in the parking lot of the elementary school that Charlie was then attending, Charlie learned to balance on his bike.

But learning to stop the bike was another thing: It took a good year plus (plus) for Charlie to learn to “squeeze the brakes” when Jim and Charlie came to a stop sign. Jim started pointing them out when Charlie was 6 and it was about 3 years later that, on a walk around our neighborhood, I started to notice Charlie looking up. He was looking at a sign (it was for the speed limit, rather than a stop sign) and from then on, I noted that he was much more aware of street signs in general. And lately while on a walk, Charlie has been stopping when the sidewalk ends and turning around to look back at me and if he notes a car coming, he stops too.

When I noted this to Jim, he said, “That’s from the bike rides—he’s really aware of cars.”

Sunday started overcast and even a big muggy, but the sun was out in full force by noon and after a sluggish day, Jim got out the bikes and he and Charlie were off. I guess I ought to call it “bike therapy”—everyone was energized afterwards, Charlie running inside to tell me he wanted to eat, and then going to put his bike away when I asked. We went out to his favorite hamburger stand, per his request, and he sang exuberantly all the way there. He wanted to sit outside. It was cool but not cold and so we ate dinner with a crescent moon rising behind us, while Charlie asked frequently for dousings of ketchup on his food. And after saying “no school” when we talked about Monday, after a shower and a little YouTube he shut the lid of Jim’s laptop and nodded when we mentioned that he’d best to get bed early for school.

I’m going to quote one frame suggested by Ms. Clark:

Yes, the autistic person needs to adapt to the wider world, but the wider world needs to adapt to the autisic person, too.

Yes and double yes a couple of times over.

From the Sun News (Myrtle Beach), an article about the Little Red Dog Foundation, which seeks to give away specially-equipped tricycles to disabled residents, many of whom are children.