1. He insists that I cut his fingernails one night and his toenails the next night. They can never be cut on the same night.

2. He drinks orange juice boxes, but no other flavor of juice box. If he wants apple juice, it has to be out of a bottle from the fridge, not a juice box. And the orange juice boxes have to be room temperature.

3. He must wear socks to bed every night except during the hottest times of the year.

4. He must use his blue Christmas cup to rinse his mouth after he brushes his teeth. Attempts to change the cup have been unsuccessful.

5. If I say we are going out to run some errands, he must know what stores we're going to and in what order; how many things we're getting at each store; how long we're going to be at each store; and what time we'll be back home.

6. Whenever I go into the linen closet to get some towels or put away something, he follows me and closes the door on me.

7. He watches the same cartoons on demand over and over until they run out and are replaced by other episodes.

8. When he has to take medicine, he takes the dosage cup and a cup of water, clicks them together as though he's proposing a toast, and then takes the medicine, followed by the water.

9. He refuses to eat most sweets. He will not eat chocolate. If he eats cake, it must be vanilla or white cake with no frosting. He will not eat ice cream, cookies, candy, or chew gum. The only exception is Nilla Wafers.

Sundays are my alone days. Baby Bear goes to his father's, so I usually spend the day leafing through the newspaper, switching around the Sunday talk shows, or taking a nap--"drifting,"as I have come to call it. It's my own precious, unstructured time to decompress from the past week and gather strength for the coming week.

Yesterday I decided to go online and see what was new on the autism forums. As I was browsing, I came across a message that contained a link to a web site called "Autism Speaks":

http://www.autismspeaks.org/video/glossary.php

When I went there, I found that it had video clips of "typical" children doing simple tasks, such as playing with a toy or responding to a request, and alongside each was a clip of a child with red flags for autism doing the same tasks.

I watched the first clip of a baby playing with a toy and interacting with the clinician. Then I watched the companion clip with the autistic child. As I watched, the world seemed to shatter and drop at my feet like smashed glass. The second child was acting exactly as Baby Bear had acted at that age, examining the toy intently, turning it over and over in his hands, not making eye contact or responding to the clinician's words. I jumped up from the computer, ran blindly down the stairs to my bedroom, flung myself on my bed, and sobbed. Never had my son's situation been made so clear to me. I'd never analysed what "typical" children did before--Baby Bear is my only child, and whatever he did and continues to do seems "normal" to me because that's all I know.

Presently I composed myself, went back to the computer, and watched every one of the clips. I saw many examples of Baby Bear's behaviour reflected in the autistic children, but not once did BB mirror the "typical" children.

At that point I decided to review some videos I had taken of BB when he was a baby. I dug out one in which he received his first tricycle when he was 21 months old. I remember the day well, and I was always so glad I'd captured it on tape because I thought it was so cute.

Here again was BB's father carrying him down the stairs to the yard where the new trike was waiting. Here again was BB's delight at the wonderful new toy. And here again, seen through my new eyes, was Baby Bear very deliberately kneeling beside the trike, overturning it, and spinning the wheels and foot pedals with his tiny finders. He refused to sit on the trike, but remained preoccupied spinning the wheels. When his father put him in the seat he promptly got off, squatted beside the trike, and spun the wheels some more. Finally he grasped the push-handle behind the seat and wheeled the trike down the street by pushing it in front of him. I remember that we followed him like this for at least an hour, and he never sat on the seat until the very end. However, he did stop several times to spin the wheels and pedals with his hands.

I then watched another video, this one from Thanksgiving of that same year, in which some friends of ours brought their two little girls over to the house. Again through new eyes I watched as the girls played and pretended with each other while Baby Bear sat off by himself, absorbed in in a toy or clinging to his father.

At this point I decided to buy a video converter so I can preserve the dozens of videotapes I have to DVDs. That way they will be preserved, and I can study them in more detail through the tears, and the hope, in my new eyes.

A message from Mr. Kitty inspires a musing on how Baby Bear relates to another member of our family--our cat, Divi.

From the moment Divi entered our lives as a kitten, Baby Bear was both fascinated and frightened by her. He would chase her mercilessly around the house and laugh whenever she ran away or arched her back in fear. I tried to acclimate BB to her, taking his hand in mine and running it gently along her back so he could experience the feeling of petting her. But then he would lunge at her, or make sudden, loud noises, and she would run away again.

As Divi grew, so did her ability to defend herself. I had her declawed, and her instinct to slap Baby Bear whenever he gets too close serves her well without resulting in injury to BB.

The thing is, we've had Divi for five years now, and to this day whenever BB sees her, he screams and acts like it's the first time in his life he's ever beheld such a creature. Often he's afraid to leave the room or go up the stairs by himself for fear she'll chase him, which she invariably does. (Of course, to be fair, she chases me up the stairs, batting at my feet with every step, but BB experiences this as terrifying hostility.)

Since BB can't read social cues, he has no idea when Divi is angry or frightened. I've tried explaining to him that when her back is arched, her fur is standing up, and her eyes are the size of dinner plates she is probably not feeling very friendly, but he seems to forget this within seconds of my explanation. Then, the next thing I know, I hear him screaming for me to "save" him from the ferocious cat.

Divi brings a much-needed balance to all the yang energy in the house, so I don't want to get rid of her. Besides, even BB acknowledges that she's a part of our family--once, when we couldn't find her and thought she'd escaped outside, he began crying, saying he'd lost his "best friend." Luckily we found her contemplating us cooly from under the couch--no doubt resting up for her next sparring session with Baby Bear.

Joining this Forum and writing about my son seem like the most tangible acts of acceptance I've committed. Though I always knew he was "special," and he's received various diagnosesthroughout the years, deep down I had hoped he was just going through a stage, or that there was something I could do, or not do, to make him "regular." I now surrender those thoughts in the acceptance that this is real and that it's my job as his mother to use every resource I can to help him. I'm glad there are so many resources available, like this Forum, yet I'm also scared because I have so much to learn and I feel so overwhelmed by it all.