We do not, as I’ve noted from time to time, have a TV set—a fact which, when I happened to mention it to my students a while back, completely shocked them. “What do you do?” they sputtered. The class was my Elementary Latin class and it was one of those “teachable moments” when I could have launched into a discussion about “how did the Romans spend their free time” and “what about those giadiator fights.” It was the week before exams and we had so much to review and so I let the moment past, and got back to the fourth conjugation of verbs.

Apparently I’d made an impression on my students, as they brought up the not-having-a-tv business a couple of times (mostly, I suspect, to avoid having to think about that inevitable entity, the Final Exam). “I have to have TV,” one student commented. And another: “Dr. Chew, doesn’t your son want it?”

My answer further confounded things. Charlie, as I’ve noted before, is not a TV watcher or, for that matter, a video watched, or a player of video games, or a player of computer games, or a user of the computer in general. I guess it is a sort of a stereotype or autism myth, or possibly even an autism reality, that autistic children like all things electronic. (We know a boy who, in his earlier childhood, had a total fascination with electric cords and outlets: Oh yes, dangerous!) Charlie appears to be in the (very) (small) percentage of children to confute the stereotype.

Charlie usually tells me “I need a break” after a maximum five minutes at the computer and, in the good old days when we had a TV set and cable (because we actually do own a TV set, but have not bothered to get cable), Charlie mostly liked to watch videos. Not just any videos, of course, but about 4 or 5 certain ones of The Purple One, and a few select Wiggles ones too. An attempt to switch to DVDs was only partially successful, Charlie having an unshakeable preference for the larger rectangular objects with that visible strip of tape (Charlie having a longstanding preference also for cassette tapes, but that’s another story). By the time we cancelled Comcast, the only thing that was being watched on the TV was some ESPN by Jim and Charlie glancing occasionally on.

All of this is to say that I am indeed going to miss seeing Jenny McCarthy, in her capacity as Generation Rescue spokesperson, on Larry King Live tonight. Having, as you may also know, written kind of a lot about McCarthy and her stance about, or rather against, vaccines, I kind of have a feeling that I’ve some idea of what she’ll be saying. Courtesy of my email inbox, I’ve been sent a summary of the show:

…….hear the facts tomorrow night as Larry King asks the tough questions on:

* How to vaccinate while lowing [sic] the risk of children getting autism
* How to effectively treat and prevent autism, ADHD and other neurological disorders and chronic illness

In-ter-est-ing. Sounds like there’ll be some references to how a parent can change the schedule of vaccines (despite the fact that vaccines don’t cause autism). Also, sounds like Generation Rescue is extending its concerns/campaign/rescue operations beyond autism, to ADHD and “other neurological disorders and chronic illness.”

Though what if autism, ADHD, “other neurological disorders and chronic illness,” still exist even after vaccine schedules are changed? What’s to be done—change the schedule again? Admit that vaccines have been, and are becoming, a sort of sideshow in the larger discussion about autism, and a topic for TV talk shows and celebrity magazines—-something that distracts us from the really pressing, urgent questions and concerns regarding autistic children and adults, like how to create and maintain good schools with good services, trained aides and staff and therapists, jobs that draw on people’s talents and choices for housing, and much more?

Whatever gets talked about on Larry King Live tonight, I suspect it won’t be enough to convince me to call up Comcast so we can watch TV.

Thanks to all who sent the kind birthday regards. My birthday coincided with the last day of classes at my college and the morning was packed with review sessions prior to exams and a couple of phone calls about matters that needed to be figured out by today (meaning Wednesday, i.e., yesterday) and some missing files of a rather important nature. (Two found, one still missing.) At 11am a student came in to talk about her graduate school applications; she had a bag lined in red tissue paper (a little soggy from the rain) and gave it to me. Inside was a hardcover version of my Latin textbook.

Since I first taught my student Elementary Latin four years ago, I’ve been through three or four paperback versions of the book. The cover inevitably gets ripped off and the book’s spine splits, and the corners get ruffled and ripped, and a couple of pages fall out and become occasional bookmarks. So having a much more durable hardback book should help. But getting one was something I just would never have done on my own. I have plenty of (worn and weary) copies of the textbook and I know some students struggle just to pay for their book. I can’t say how grateful I felt that my student had noted all this, and helped me out.

I’ve worked for most of Charlie’s life and while the demands of a job certainly make things more harried and add to the stress, I’ve also gained a lot of support from mycolleagues and students. Jim and I are in a constant conversation about Charlie and autism and much else; we both also agree that having “other interests” (here’s a longstanding one of Jim’s) and reaching out to others, both those who have a connection to autism and those who don’t, has been essential.

Jim’s schedule changed much in the past few years and he can be home more, but when we first moved back to New Jersey in 2001 with half of a job for the three of us, he had to work much longer hours, plus we lived in central New Jersey and Jim was working in the Bronx. Charlie and I spent a lot of time with just the two of us, and those were the days when I couldn’t go grocery shopping with him. Soon as I turned my back, Charlie’d be opening a container of something and eating. I initially started blogging in June 2005 on a hot June day when Charlie was floundering in a summer school program (that was not at all “appropriate“) and I was scheming about how we were going to pass a long afternoon when even the playground was off limits, the slides scorching hot under the sun.

The internet’s a rich, unregulated, and sprawling source of information, about autism and therapies and treatments and who knows what. I’ve found it to be as much a source of community, especially as a parent isolated by circumstances and grateful for support and help from someone out there, anywhere. First there was email for me and then blogging and now there’s been the rise of all the “social networking sites.”

Ive been very excited that one of my sister mom-bloggers, Bonnie Sayers, has organized Autism Twitter Day for next Tuesday, December 16th. Here’s what it’s about (via Left Brain/Right Brain; also see the autism group on Twitter, via I Speak of Dreams):

Autism Twitter Day – Tuesday, Dec 16th pacific standard time – 9AM, 12:30 PM and 8 PM. Prizes will be given out and a panel will be available with information and to answer questions.

This is open to twitter members, specifically those who are members of the autism community, whether it be a parent, sibling or relative. If you are on the spectrum you are welcome to take part. Most of the prizes are geared to children and young adults with autism or asperger syndrome.

The hashtag to be used for autism twitter day is #ASD. This means when you post a tweet that day which is on the topic of autism – positive autism awareness, please use the hashtag, either in front or at end of the tweet. Open up a window at www.summize.com and input #ASD to follow along with the conversation at the specified times. Most likely they will run longer than one hour. Stay tuned here and to my blog for prize and panel info.

We will be testing your knowledge on autism spectrum disorders, this is how the prizes will be awarded.

Bonnie has assembled an ever-growing collection of prizes, ranging from a children’s hammock (Charlie is too big for this, I suspect) to software to storytime felt sets. I’m not a big Twitter-er (my Twitter id is autismvox) but will be sure to be Twitter-ing on December 16th, and I don’t think I’ll be alone.

I certainly wasn’t for my birthday. We had dinner at a diner a couple of towns over, Jim and Charlie on one side of a booth and me opposite, and then it was home and opening presents and my guys were (as always) very nice to me, though I didn’t get anything on the order of the Autism Twitter Day prizes likes Mary’s Gone Crackers or a hardback version of my ancient Greek textbook.

This is the last week of classes at the college where I teach; after finals, spring semester does not start till mid-January. It’ll be good not to have to rush around so much and to work more around home, and, certainly, not to have to hurry home on the highway to meet Charlie’s schoolbus.

It does occur to me that, if I didn’t work, I could spare us a certain amount of anxiety: What to do when Charlie is sick? What to do if there’s an early morning meeting to attend or one in the later afternoon? What I do at work—-teaching Latin and ancient Greek and some administrative and advising duties—has little (obvious) relevance to what Charlie is learning and to what he needs.

Some years ago, I thought seriously about becoming an autism teacher, so I’d be able to devote myself full-time to what Charlie needed. As it’s turned out, I’ve stayed with the Latin and Greek. In an article in today’s Buffalo News about working mothers of special needs children, Julie Barrett O’Neill—the executive direcor of Buffalo Niagara Riverkeeper and the mother of three children, one of whom has Down Sydnrome—-says:

“I am really grateful for having children, because it puts all of my [Riverkeeper] work into perspective –what we’re really working to change, and who we’re really serving. Because the work we do takes so long, we’re really working for our children more than ourselves.”

It also keeps her from being a workaholic, she said. “Sometimes when you love your job it can consume your entire life. This helps me have a better balance.”

Laura Marshak, the author of Married With Special-Needs Children: A Couples’ Guide to Keeping Connected and a psychology professor in Pennsylvania, is quoted as saying that O”Neill’s “easy balance” is unusual. Certainly it hasn’t been easy to find a “balance” in taking care of Charlie and doing my job; Jim does a lot, from getting Charlie ready to meet the morning schoolbus to setting up his own schedule with Charlie’s and my needs in mind. My own hours a lot more flexible than in a 9 to 5 job (as are Jim’s) and, thanks to email and the internet in general, I can still get some work done while at home. (And blog, too, but that’s not “work.”)

And, over the years, my own efforts to teach the not-exactly-easy subjects of Latin and ancient Greek to my students—-most of whom are studying to be nurses, teachers, businessman, social workers, and who know they have to go to work straight after college—have taught me a lot about how to teach and help Charlie. As he’s 11 1/2 now, it’s occurred to me that my students (18-22 years old) are closer in age to him than they are to me and more than a few of them have had their share of various struggles, and school isn’t always the easiest for them, either. If I didn’t have Charlie, I’d probably end up volunteering for all kinds of committees and extra projects and while I’d like to, with Julie Barrett O’Neill, I’d say that life raising Charlie helps to keep work from becoming all-consuming.

Though I still am grateful not to have to keep looking at the clock on my cellphone to make sure I make it into the parking lot before the schoolbus does for a few weeks.

I’m on the train to Washington D.C., to attend a meeting of the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee, which coordinates efforts concerning autism within the US Department of Health and Human Research. There’s a list of the federal and non-federal members of the IACC here; the committee has been overseeing the writing of the Strategic Plan for Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) Research. Over the past year, there have been numerous calls for input from “stakeholders”—from anyone concerned about autism—and other meetings of the IACC and of workgroups concerning various parts of the plan.

I went to an IACC meeting just about a year ago and read this statement. While I wrote up and sent in a statement for today’s meeting, there apparently is not space on the agenda for me to read it at the meeting, though I was told that copies of my statement will be included in folders given to the members of the committee. I emphasized the need to focus on research that can directly affect and improve the lives of autistic individuals here, now and today, and on the need to provide education and services for autistic individuals in the community, and that integration and inclusion are not goals to be aimed at, but simply essential.

Time and again in the past years raising Charlie, we’ve more than once heard the suggestion (sometimes a very strongly put suggestion) that Charlie be sent “out,” as in to an “out of district” school placement, where he would be very much outside the community, the people, that he lives in. While we have in the past been interested in Charlie attending a private autism school where all the teaching might be geared towards kids with his sorts of learning profile, I really think that he would lose something if he were not in daily (if limited) contact with kids his age, in a setting that kids his age are generally in.

At the moment, this setting is middle school. I visited Charlie’s classroom on Monday: It’s a well-ordered environment. Charlie uses a schedule broken down into a series of small binders throughout the day. There’s photos, small phrases, and Language Master cards velcro’d to the pages, and he knows to get the different binders and work through the pages.

The physical environment of his classroom is more, what shall I say, institutional-seeming than last year—he’s in a lower-ceilinged room with windows that look out onto a hallway, across from a small courtyard—generally, it’s the whole middle school (with some 1400 students) that seems more “institutional-seeming.” It’s a huge 70s-ish building with lots of shades of brown, all on one level, and without the aesthetic attributes of the town’s high school and elementary schools. It is, indeed, a middle school, playgroundless and the first step towards some kind of adulthood not only for Charlie and his three classmates, but also for every other student at the school. There was a fire drill when I visited. The 1400 students plus many, many teachers and staff all streamed out and stood in neatly ordered rows before streaming back in. Uncertainty, simple bafflement, the wish to run and loll about on the grass, yawns—-these were all to be seen in many of the students.

I thought of Charlie’s struggle to accommodate himself to getting up earlier and to a much earlier start to his school day. Seeing the while middle school out on the grass together, dutifully and somberly lined in rows for a fire drill, many pretending not to shiver in short sleeves though they’d been told to get their coats, it occurred to me that Charlie’s not alone in feeling a sort of loss and puzzlement at finding himself in a bigger setting, and with so many more expectations and demands placed on him. And yet—-

And yet, back when I was just starting to teach (before Charlie was born), I taught Latin at a private school in St. Louis, Missouri. I taught both middle and high school students and was surprised to discover that that 7th and 8th graders seemed so often the most eager to learn, the most determined to know every miniscule thing about third declension i-stem adjectives; the most curious, intellectually and otherwise. And, the most uncertain, insecure, and defiantly confused about anything social (and, of course, involving the opposite sex).

Charlie’s different in ways small and profound from his peers. He doesn’t have homeroom as he stays in one classroom; he doesn’t have science or social studies and he’s not in his first year of learning a foreign language. But he is one among many other kids in our town; he’s not hidden away, and he’s not at all forgotten.

And I guess it’s to make sure that he and kids and individuals like him are never forgotten, segregated, or give second or worse-class treatment, that I took the 5.46am train to Washington, D.C.

Go here to see the agenda for the November 21st meeting.

The Romans, as I tell my incredulous students, did not have a concept of a weekend. Each months had its Kalends, Nones, and Ides, and feriae (holidays) in which the usual negotia of lawsuits, labor, and other transactions concerning the res of daily life were suspended.

While he does not talk about it, Charlie’s got an internalize sense of time. He had Thursday and Friday off from school as it was the annual convention of the NJEA (New Jersey Education Association). Its a small rupture in his schedule to have the one long weekend in early November. As Jim and I have to work, my parents visit from California.

Saturday Jim had to be at a conference and I went to see a friend, and then planned to go into New York to meet Jim and have dinner with friends. It was pouring rain for most of the day and this added to Charlie being less than peaceful easy-feeling all day: Exercise outside was not possible and he ended up spending a lot of time in the back seat of the minivan my parents had rented. Further, our black car needed fairly serious repairs (it has almost 100,000 miles on it; bought it in April of 2005) and Charlie, while enjoying the space to spread out in the buslike interior of the minivan, kept calling for the black car. He was relieved when I picked it up mid-Saturday afternoon, after which I drove to Jersey City on my way to meeting Jim.

It all added up to a lot of out of routine-ness. I called my parents while waiting to meet Jim: A dumped-over bowl of yello rice, back and forth running around. Only after I talked to my parents did it occur to me, it was the third day since Charlie’d been in school and it was time to be back there.

As he will be tomorrow, soon enough, and soon enough we’ll be dealing with Thanksgiving — but, without procrastinating too much, I’ll leave that for tomorrow.

(Sunny today—-bike ride in order.)

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds—–that’s the unofficial creed of the US Postal Service, courtesy of the ancient Greek historian Herodotus. I was thinking of it today while Charlie, with the wind picking up and a few drops of moisture fluttering around in the air, ran to get his bike.

He’d woken at 7.30, and ran around while Jim and I called out that we’d be “up soon.” Charlie waited on the couch, peering out the window, while Jim got him his favorite weekend breakfast at the (very excellent) local bagel store. After that, with the sky getting not only gray but dark, I mentioned a bike ride and Charlie first got his bike, then his helmet, and then came back inside and asked for Jim’s helmet.

It was nowhere to be found and Charlie was frowning as he pushed his bike out to the street. He likes his routines, but Charlie can be a lot more flexible than might be thought and off he and Jim (helmetless) went. I figured that the rain would start after a short while and kept expecting a call from Jim to meet them but they were gone almost 2 hours. Jim noted that he’d kept them riding in the vicinity of the train station of the next town over so they could duck into it for cover, but they didn’t have to. Instead, they explored some different and new streets and neighborhoods, with a stop at a 7-11 on the way back.

“Yellow rice!” Charlie was calling for this as he kicked down his bike’s kickstand. Jim had been talking about going out to dinner at a certain Spanish restaurant that serves a very nice paella; he noted that Charlie had turned down the offer a Golden Arches fast food lunch. It was only 2pm and, while talking about his dinner plans, Charlie fell sound asleep on the couch. Biking in a strong wind, with rain imminent and the sky all gray, can tire you out, and it was a 2-plus hour nap. (He wasn’t the only one who dozed off.)

Jim went out for a fast ride around the block at 5pm; Charlie got up slowly, grabbed his helmet, and asked again for Jim’s, and suddenly I sighted it, at the side of a table (piled high with numerous other items). Charlie ran out and gave Jim the helmet and pushed his bike into the street. It took a few seconds for Charlie to swing his left leg over the seat and to pull himself onto the bike, then off he and Jim went, just for a few spins round the corner, before the rain picked up.

The rain was coming down and, as we drove in the black car to the Spanish restaurant, it was hard to see out the windows. We made it, Charlie grinning hugely, and hungrily—-he scraped the metal bowl to get the last of the paella.

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays this family from our appointed bike-riding and rice-eating rounds…….

Senior Matt Farag has a “zest for learning,” today’s Gatehouse News Service Reports. Diagnosed at 6 with autism, Matt

…..will browse the encyclopedia and history books in his St. Charles home, memorizing notable facts and dates on history, dinosaurs and insects. Matt also can name each of the presidents and vice presidents in order and their middle names.

My son Charlie doesn’t do this—-reading’s been a long-time challenge for him—-but he too has a deep-running “zest for learning.” The word “student” comes from the Latin studere, “to be eager, to have zeal”—-and no better example of true students than Matt and Charlie, if I may say so.

Yesterday’s Pathophilia reviews a group of studies (two by Mark and David Geier) about testosterone levels in autistic children. Pathophilia finds that testoterone is not increased in autistic children.

The Cambridge-based Autism Research Centre is also researching hormones in autistic individuals. The Foetal testosterone Longitudinal Study seeks to find out whether elevated levels of foetal testosterone are associated with a later diagnosis of autism spectrum conditions. The Current hormones Project is looking at whether current hormone levels might also be atypical in autism and Asperger Syndrome. And another project is looking specifically at puberty.

Yes, as you may have guessed, I’ve got puberty—so to speak—on my mind.

Charlie’s 11 (and five months, to be precise) and he has definitely entered this new stage of development. He must have shot up some 3 inches over the summer; no pair of long pants really seems to fit him, and Jim’s trying to figure out the best moment to use the electric shaver. Charlie is in middle school—-6th grade, as he IEP notes—-and he is the youngest student in his class, and the tallest. Growth spurts, growing pains, the whole puberty thing. I tend to read most about autism and special needs and neurological disorders and the like, but lately I’ve been throwing in a lot more reading about adolescence in boys.

The mornings have become chilly and it’s still dark when the alarm goes off. Consequently, getting out from under the cocoon warmth of a big fleece blanket has been less and less easy for Charlie, and more and more jarring. Charlie usually snoozes off on the bus and then has to go through a second wake-up and, some days, he’s fallen asleep at school and just can’t wake up.

My very mundane guess about this is that adolescence, with its physical and so many other changes, is proving to be hard and laborious for Charlie. I’m not surprised—when Charlie was a baby, it seemed always to take some sort of extra effort for him to roll over, sit up, scoot, stand. He was nearing 16 months when he started to walk. Talking—and much else—-started ever so slowly for Charlie.

And it’s looking like his passage through the stages of adolescence will be equally slow, full of one setback after another, and just so hard. I still remember when Charlie was about 15 months in daycare and trying, trying, to get on his feet. He didn’t talk at all then and Jim and I felt both a strange wonder mixed with misgiving to hear a girl who was not yet three speak in paragraphs, it seemed, and every other child run, skip, and hurry around, while Charlie carefully made his way across the floor.

Charlie has been quite aware of his own tiredness. For the past few notes he has, on his own initiative, taken himself to bed just after 8.30pm. He still takes melatonin (he tends to get hyper at night) and he usually does not fall asleep for a half-hour plus. These past two nights, I’ve sensed that he just wants to go lie down with his blankets and Leapsters in bed and, I don’t know, stare at the ceiling. He still tucks his hands behind his head for comfort, just how his hands and arms were when he was born. Saturday and Sunday, we’ve been glad that Charlie has no activities he needs to wake up for, and he sometimes wakes up around 7.30 and then is back to sleep till 11.30.

If you could see what a lean, lanky, leggy “long tall drink of water” as Jim sometimes says, that Charlie is growing into, it doesn’t seem surprising that he would be so fatigued. All that growing seems to be consuming vast amounts of Charlie’s energy. Coupled with the greater demands of being in middle school, it’s been a whole new world.

I have been reading Ovid’s Metamorphoses with my mythology class. Ovid opens his long poem by writing of “forms changed into new bodies“: In story after story about the nymph Daphne turned into the laurel tree, of Echo become only her voice among the rocks and Narcissus a flower, of Philomela turned into the nightingale, Ovid subtly make clear, metamorphosis hurts. Daphne’s skin becomes bark, her hair twigs and leaves, her feet grow down into the ground. All is changed and, it’s hoped, some new beauty is born.

And the growing pains—it’s hoped they rise and fade, and rise and ebb.

A commenter under the moniker of “Rainmanretired” posted this about the Q & A on autism and what John McCain said that was posted on Newsweek yesterday:

Kristina said she knew nothing about autism before she had a son with it, I was wondering just how she expected John McCain to know all about it? No he probably doesn’t know what all the differents’s are between all the different things that effect children BUT he wants to help ALL not just autism children. …….

I thought of this very question as I was talking during the interview about how I indeed “knew nothing about autism” before my son was diagnosed. I had barely heard, let alone thought of, the word “autism” before daycare teachers and an “evaluator” let the word slide past their lips, like a most furtive message. “Autism”: The word was always uttered in reverent tones of dread and the only proper response to hearing it seemed to be “oh no, not that, please not that, please not that!”

I was given pamphlets that I only read when I found them a year later, under a stack of cards and magazines and files on the dining room table. One—it was a light purple, with a drawing of little children standing hand in hand at the bottom—had a title like “About Pervasive Developmental Disorder Not Otherwise Specified.” Such a huge mouthful of a term, I thought, vague words, unhelpful, alien.

It was the au-word. Autism. The word was familiar to me for one reason only that I have to blush about: I teach Latin and ancient Greek to college students and autos, autê, auto is ancient Greek for “he, she, it,” for “self” and for “same.” And yes, for a mother who’d newly learned that her toddler “had autism,” being a translator of poetry from ancient dead languages seemed about the most useless occupation in the world.

Like many mothers and fathers who learn their child is autistic, I responded by throwing myself into learning everything I could about autism. I took a leave from my job, resigned from the job, stayed at home overseeing Charlie’s education, packed up our household to move back to New Jersey, and got two part-time jobs in fields other than what I had trained in, wondered whether (as more than a few parents wonders after raising autistic child and thinking about autism day in, day out, and in one’s dreams) I should become a teacher or therapist for autistic children.

I chose not to and, after some years, found my way back to teaching Latin and ancient Greek. Most (all) mothers (and parents) of special needs children have their hands more than full whether they have a job outside the house—-we’re all working mothers. Whatever my views about the politics of presidential candidates and autism, the choice of Sarah Palin has brought an issue I think all the time of—being a working mother of a special needs child—into the national discussion, and I appreciate this very much.

I often feel I’d have more than enough to do if I just had my job, or if I were “just” the mother of a boy with a lot of needs. Doing both “jobs” (motherhood’s not so much a “job” to me, as a way of being) has real benefits. I’m a teacher, to, and struggle to figure out how to best teach and motivate my students, and sometimes feel baffled when, despite my and their every effort, they “just don’t seem to get it”—-that tells me I have to change something I’m doing. On a more pragmatic level, knowing about autism, about Asperger’s syndrome, about learning disabilities, about ADD and ADHD, has made me much more attuned to the diversity (in all senses of that word, including neurodiversity) in my own classroom.

For doing my best by Charlie and by my students, knowing about autism has made a real difference. Without knowing about autism, and these past 11-plus years of taking care of Charlie, I don’t think I would be as good a teacher (not that I’m sure of how good a teacher I’m judged to be). I regret that I didn’t know anything about autism or special education or different pedagogical models and methodologies until I had Charlie.

And, just to be a bit polemical (political, even), it seems to me that an understanding of disability and of difference is something to be looked for in a teacher, in a leader……….even in a future President.

For me, still a lot more to learn.

So for all the heightened awareness about autism, and despite the fact that most people I meet say “I know someone who has an autistic child/brother/child of co-worker/etc.,” numerous myths about autism persist.

And, ok, I’ll admit it: One can feel a certain amount of satisfaction in debunking one of those, such as the claim that autistic persons lack empathy.

Last Sunday, Jim and Charlie went on one of their long, long, long bike rides. They go here and there and onto certain favorite streets. Charlie often rides ahead. He’s started going really really fast and Jim zooms after to keep up. Charlie’s learned about going left and right, about stopping at stop signs, about watching out for cars, all while riding his bike. (He does have to be careful around the rear view mirrors of parked cars—he crashed against one once and fell off his bike.) (Falling itself being, I guess you could say, part of the whole kid-bike experience.) Sometimes they stop for sodas and snacks and sit where they can see the bikes.

Sunday was warm, autumn colors lining the roads, and Jim told me how broadly Charlie was beaming as they peddled through a park. They were coming out on a path and came upon a father and his son, who was about four years old and on a little bike with training wheels. As Jim recounted to me, the father was saying things like this:

“You’re not doing it right. You don’t remember everything I showed you yesterday. You’re not getting it right.”

Charlie rode by and, just as he did, the other little boy burst out crying.

The glow immediately left Charlie’s face. He was nervous and weepy, Jim told me; he was very agitated for another whole mile.

He’d heard another child crying and he felt bad. He felt with another child, in sympathy, which is from the ancient Greek word sym for “(together) with” and pathos, “feel,” and also a root word in “empathy.”

Which isn’t lacking in our household.