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"Look at me!"

2
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That phrase turned me
into an eye-contact coach.

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I'm the mother of Ivan; he's 15 years old.

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Ivan has autism,

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he doesn't speak,

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and he communicates through an iPad,

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where his whole universe of words
exists in images.

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He was diagnosed
when he was two and a half.

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I still remember that day painfully.

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My husband and I felt really lost;

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we didn't know where to begin.

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There was no internet,

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you couldn't Google information,

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so we made those first steps

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out of sheer intuition.

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Ivan would not maintain eye contact,

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he had lost the words that he did know,

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and he didn't respond to his name
or to anything we asked him,

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as if words were noise.

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The only way I could know

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what was going on with him,

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what he felt,

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was looking him in the eye.

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But that bridge was broken.

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How could I teach him about life?

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When I did things he liked,
he would look at me,

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and we were connected.

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So I dedicated myself
to working with him on those things,

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so we would have more and more
eye-contact moments.

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We would spend hours and hours playing tag
with his older sister, Alexia,

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and when we said: "I caught you!"

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he would look around for us,

33
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and at that moment,
I could feel he was alive.

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We also hold a record for hours spent
in a swimming pool.

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Ivan always had a passion for water.

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I remember when he was two and a half,

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on a rainy winter day,

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I was taking him to an indoor pool,

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because even on rainy days
we'd go swimming.

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We were on the highway,
and I took the wrong exit.

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He burst into tears and cried
inconsolably, nonstop,

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until I turned back.

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Only then did he calm down.

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How was it possible
that a two and a half year old

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didn't respond to his own name,

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yet in the middle of the rain and fog,
where I couldn't see anything,

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he knew the exact route?

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That's when I realized that Ivan
had an exceptional visual memory,

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and that that would be my way in.

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So I started taking
pictures of everything,

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and teaching him what life was like,

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showing it to him, picture by picture.

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Even now, it's the way Ivan communicates

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what he wants,

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what he needs

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and also what he feels.

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But it wasn't just
Ivan's eye contact that mattered.

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Everyone else's did, too.

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How could I make people see
not only his autism,

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but see him the person

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and everything he can give;

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everything he can do;

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the things he likes and doesn't like,

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just like any one of us?

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But for that, I also had
to give of myself.

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I had to have the strength to let him go,

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which was extremely difficult.

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Ivan was 11 years old,

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and he went for treatment
in a neighborhood near our house.

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One afternoon,
while I was waiting for him,

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I went into a greengrocer,

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a typical neighborhood store
with a little bit of everything.

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While doing the shopping,

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I started talking to José, the owner.

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I told him about Ivan,

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that he had autism,

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and that I wanted him to learn
to walk down the street by himself,

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without anyone holding his hand.

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So I decided to ask José
if Thursdays around 2pm,

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Ivan could come and help him arrange
the water bottles on the shelves,

81
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because he loved to organize things.

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And as a reward, he could buy
some chocolate cookies,

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which were his favorite.

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He said "yes" right away.

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So that's how it went for a year:

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Ivan would go to José's greengrocer,

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help him arrange the shelves
of water bottles

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with the labels perfectly
lined up on the same side,

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and he would leave happy
with his chocolate cookies.

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José is not an expert in autism.

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There is no need to be an expert

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nor do anything heroic to include someone.

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We just need to be there --

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(Applause)

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(Applause ends)

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Really, no heroic deed --

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we simply need to be close.

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And if we are afraid of something

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or we don't understand something,

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we need to ask.

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Let's be curious

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but never indifferent.

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Let's have the courage
to look each other in the eye,

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because by looking,

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we can open a whole world to someone else.

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(Applause)

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(Cheers)