EBD Blog

This American Life, a radio show from WBEZ aired by many NPR stations in the US, carried a story about a family living with autism. One of twin sons, Ben, has autism. The story recounts the family’s life and how, ultimately, the parents decided to have Ben live in Oconomowoc Developmental Training Center. The Royko family’s account of their lives is both moving and informative.

David Royko, Ben’s father, has published some accounts of their lives in magazines and on a Web site. In one of the accounts, he described what it has been like to visit Ben at the training center, and his feelings about life after Ben moved there. Here’s a snippet:

As for Karen and I, we miss Ben every day, sometimes achingly so, but at the same time, every day without the tsunami of autism saturating the life of our family feels like a vacation. That Ben is doing well allows us to truly enjoy our new life. If anything good has come from life with autism, it is a profound appreciation for the every-day–a sense of the ordinary feeling extraordinary. Even having a cold for the past week has been almost enjoyable because now, a cold is just a cold, not a reason for panic (Ben gets cold>gets cranky>won’t eat or drink the stuff with his meds>sleep goes completely wacky>behavior spirals out of control, etcetera, et-freaking-cetera). The other day, someone asked us if we’d gotten used to this new life yet, and I said, “No, and I hope we never do.”

Link to a streaming MP3 of broadcast; the segment about the Royko family starts about 37+ min into hour. At the This American Life Web site there are also copies for sale. Link to Mr. Royko’s page where one can find links to articles he’s written about the family’s life with autism. By the way, the first segment of the show from This American Life takes a historic look at Harry Harlow’s research with monkeys and the second describes the life of a child who was lived in an Romanian orphanage for more than 7 years. It’s worth hearing, too.