Ellen Notbohm | Ellen's Autism Digest Column

Postcards from the Road Less Traveled

by Ellen Notbohm

Parent to parent, heart to heart talk about raising a child with autism.
In every issue of Autism Asperger's Digest

This month:

THREE LITTLE WORDS

Postcards from the Road Less Traveled, Autism Asperger’s Digest
March-April 2008

Excerpt:

Another February has come and gone, and that makes twenty-something times I will not have received a Valentine from my husband. He has a long-standing allergy to what he calls “commercially mandated” holidays, and I really don’t care because 365 days a year, he shows his love in dozens of ways...

It isn’t that I don’t care about hearing those “three little words.” When Bryce was young and only minimally verbal, I had my blue moments wondering if I might never hear “I love you” from him...We may shower our kids daily – hourly! – with the words “I love you,” but we can’t assume that (they) will ascribe the same meaning to the word as we do, no matter how often they hear it.

The good thing about growing older is that your kids grow older too. One day they emerge from childhood and, rather than telling you all that you do wrong, they begin to tell you everything that you did right. Connor is 20 now and Bryce is nearing 16, and they tell me that although they certainly heard those three little words “I love you” from me on an ad nauseum basis, it was a number of other three-word phrases and the actions that accompanied them that really imprinted the I-love-you message on their hearts.

“I’ll be there...”

The full-text of Three Little Words appears in the March-April issue of Autism Asperger's Digest. Please visit www.autismdigest.com to learn about this must-read resource and a very inviting trial offer.