To understand autism, don't look away

"Look at me!"

That phrase turned me
into an eye-contact coach.

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

Ivan has autism,

he doesn't speak,

and he communicates through an iPad,

where his whole universe of words
exists in images.

He was diagnosed
when he was two and a half.

I still remember that day painfully.

My husband and I felt really lost;

we didn't know where to begin.

There was no internet,

you couldn't Google information,

so we made those first steps

out of sheer intuition.

Ivan would not maintain eye contact,

he had lost the words that he did know,

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

as if words were noise.

The only way I could know

what was going on with him,

what he felt,

was looking him in the eye.

But that bridge was broken.

How could I teach him about life?

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

and we were connected.

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

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

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

and when we said: "I caught you!"

he would look around for us,

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

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

Ivan always had a passion for water.

I remember when he was two and a half,

on a rainy winter day,

I was taking him to an indoor pool,

because even on rainy days
we'd go swimming.

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

He burst into tears and cried
inconsolably, nonstop,

until I turned back.

Only then did he calm down.

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

didn't respond to his own name,

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

he knew the exact route?

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

and that that would be my way in.

So I started taking
pictures of everything,

and teaching him what life was like,

showing it to him, picture by picture.

Even now, it's the way Ivan communicates

what he wants,

what he needs

and also what he feels.

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

Everyone else's did, too.

How could I make people see
not only his autism,

but see him the person

and everything he can give;

everything he can do;

the things he likes and doesn't like,

just like any one of us?

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

I had to have the strength to let him go,

which was extremely difficult.

Ivan was 11 years old,

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

One afternoon,
while I was waiting for him,

I went into a greengrocer,

a typical neighborhood store
with a little bit of everything.

While doing the shopping,

I started talking to José, the owner.

I told him about Ivan,

that he had autism,

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

without anyone holding his hand.

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

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

because he loved to organize things.

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

which were his favorite.

He said "yes" right away.

So that's how it went for a year:

Ivan would go to José's greengrocer,

help him arrange the shelves
of water bottles

with the labels perfectly
lined up on the same side,

and he would leave happy
with his chocolate cookies.

José is not an expert in autism.

There is no need to be an expert

nor do anything heroic to include someone.

We just need to be there --

(Applause)

(Applause ends)

Really, no heroic deed --

we simply need to be close.

And if we are afraid of something

or we don't understand something,

we need to ask.

Let's be curious

but never indifferent.

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

because by looking,

we can open a whole world to someone else.

(Applause)

(Cheers)