To a new mother, autism can look like shyness. Or fussiness. Andover Lakes resident Jenny Piccard gave her only child a lot of leeway — after all, Elias had been born prematurely at 31 weeks, weighing just 3 pounds.
It had been a difficult pregnancy; she’d had preeclampsia, a hypertensive disorder, which made her child get smaller, and then she suffered a seizure right before delivery. “I just thought he was a fussy baby. He was always crying. But I just thought that’s what babies did,” she said.
Piccard placed him in his car seat, which she faced backward next to the window, and drove as fast as she dared to her mother’s house. She tried not to take him to the grocery store, where strangers turned to stare at her screaming child.
“People looked at me, like what was I doing to make him cry? If somebody got close to the cart, and said, ‘Oh how cute you are’, he would cry, and never look,” she said. “I said, ‘Oh, he’s just a shy baby.’ But even as he got older, he was always hiding behind my skirt and he never wanted to socialize.”
Piccard thought it might be because he didn’t yet understand English, since she and her husband, Elias, speak Spanish at home. “But he never talked back, either, he would just point or say little words. My sister said, ‘He’s 3 and he doesn’t really talk. Maybe he has a developmental delay.’ I said, ‘He was premature, he’s catching up.’
That was my answer for everything.” As time went on, her sister, Erica, started to become more and more insistent on little Elias being seen by a developmental pediatrician. “She has a background in child psychology; you’d think I would have listened to her. But I was very upset by her insisting so much. I said, ‘He’s healthy, he’s happy.’”
At age 4, Piccard relented a bit, and put Elias in speech therapy three days a week at Cypress Springs Elementary. She continued to work as an underwriter for an insurance company. Two weeks later, there was a note in her child’s backpack: He cries an awful lot when he’s here. It’s hard for him to engage and play with the other children.
He sits by me or under the desk and doesn’t come out or he just cries. “I thought, ‘Why are they insisting something is wrong with my baby?’ I just didn’t want to think anything was wrong with him,” she said frankly.
Then Elias started kindergarten. It was a disaster. “His kindergarten teacher was not at all aware that Elias had a speech problem. It was always more of a behavior problem that he wasn’t talking. And he was licking his arms, putting his hands in his mouth, hitting other people,” she said. “I just thought, ‘This is not my son.
This can’t be happening.’ I had my reservations, because he was fine when he got home. It was hard for me to believe.” It took Dr. Joseph Keeley just 45 minutes before he uttered his diagnosis, “autism.”
Just a part of who he is
Autism is a brain development disorder that hinders socialization and causes restricted, repetitive behavior. Unusual responses to sensory stimuli — loud noises, different tastes and uncomfortable textures in particular — are common. Piccard said she and her husband spent three weeks blaming each other or not speaking at all.
Ultimately, it came down to their fears: Does this mean Elias is not going to get married? Is he not going to go to college? Can I manage my career and his therapy schedule? Financially are we going to make it? Their love for Elias delivered a great zeal; she, her husband and her sister attacked the problem “like gangbusters,” she said.
They made good use of the free resources at University of Central Florida Center for Autism and Related Disabilities (CARD). Occupational therapy three times a week with sensory integration therapy, speech therapy twice a week. Elias was put on a sensory diet, his skin brushed with a silicone brush, he listened to calming music. In many ways, 8-year-old Elias is a regular kid today. He likes singing, skateboarding, playing video games, buying things on eBay, and eating Popeye’s fried chicken.
He likes swimming in pools but not the ocean. He likes music, but not too loud. He loves movies, especially director’s cuts and behind-the-scenes featurettes. He’s even been known to watch films in other languages, like German or Cantonese, and mimic the sounds he hears. “He’s very literal. I said to my husband, ‘You’re nuts.’ And Elias, very seriously, said, ‘No, Mommy, he’s Daddy,’ Piccard said.
Elias hums a lot — trying to modulate himself — and when he’s excited, he flaps his hands up and down. He hates when his shoes get wet. “When the Martin Luther King holiday came around, he was very upset — they told him the story. It’s very difficult for him to understand what death is. And when he gets upset, it’s kind of ugly. “He might hit himself, he might put his hand through my car window.
He’s big enough now to where he can hurt himself or someone else. So we try to be careful what we say. But we can protect him only so much.” Elias’ world is one in which the shades of gray don’t exist, and the world is either black or it’s white. Police officers scare him. When he sees a cop, he runs the other way.
If he’s in the car, he ducks. Once, when several police officers came to Andover Elementary — Elias is in first grade — he was petrified. He said, “We’re going to die today.” “I said, ‘Buddy, why are you saying that?’ He said, ‘Because police officers have guns and they kill people and they take people to jail.’” His fear of death translates into Elias not wanting to grow up. “I said, ‘One day you’ll have a beard like Daddy.’
He said, ‘No, I don’t want to.’ When I took him to the doctor, he said, ‘Wow, Elias, you’re getting big.’ He was very upset with that. He said, ‘I don’t want to be big like Daddy. I just want to be a kid forever.’” For the Piccards, it’s gotten easier as Elias gets more verbal. His father has put his knowledge to good use — his employees at Uppercuts, a barbershop on South Orange Avenue, know how to handle children with autism.
His mother is active in Autism Speaks, a nonprofit advocacy group. “Elias has taught us a lot about his world. He has made us better parents. We’re more aware of what’s happening. He’s very open with us. If something bothers him, he says, ‘Mom, I’m very frustrated,’” Piccard said. “He’s a comedian. He thrives on new things.
And by looking at something once or twice, he’s got it memorized. The autism doesn’t make him. It’s just a part of who he is. He has autism, but he’s not autistic.”
