The following excerpt of text is from the book, Living With Autism: The Parents' Stories, by Kathleen M. Dillon, Ph.D., edited by Nora Percival Muller, available from Parkway Publishers, PO Box 3678, Boone, NC 28607.

Trials of Day-to-Day Living

While parents may have problems with professionals over the diagnosis, labelling, or cause of their child's autism, nothing compares with the stress of living day to day with a person with autism. No one who hasn't been through it, not even the most empathetic friend, can fully understand this experience. One way to get a realistic idea of the stress involved would be to spend an unstructured day alone with a person with autism.

As was mentioned earlier, children with autism share a common diagnosis, along with the general traits outlined in the DSM-IV criteria, but no two children with autism will manifest these problems in the same way. In looking at a cross section of individuals with autism, probably the most striking initial impression is of tremendous variability. A typical sample might include some infants and some old men, some eccentric piano tuners with IQs of 110 and some profoundly retarded, institutionalized individuals. A gentle, wraithlike 7-year-old might be observed, as would a screeching adolescent who banged his head to the point of skull fracture. A few individuals with idiosyncratic interests in train or bus schedules might be present, as might many individuals who appeared unable or unwilling to communicate. Indeed, it was incredible, as well as fortunate, that Leo Kanner (1943) was able, from such a mixed bag of symptoms, to first identify the syndrome (Volkmar & Cohen, 1988).

Because of this extreme variability, the stories in this book will never be matched exactly by other children, although similarities will be observed. Some of the behaviors exhibited by children with autism are in the realm of delayed development, in the sense that they are characteristic of much younger children. For example, a teenage boy may reach for your hand to cross a street, much as a young child might. Some of the behaviors, however, are unusual for any age, and some are bizarre. For example, a young girl with autism, when asked a simple question, may respond by flapping her hands in front of her face.