What I Wanted to Tell the Autistic Boy at the Concert

Dear little boy at the Hollywood Bowl,

We don’t know each other, but I was hoping to meet you to thank you. You looked to be 8 or 9 years old, and you were sitting a few rows behind me during a recent performance by Joshua Bell, the virtuoso violinist, with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. As Bell and the symphony performed, you occasionally accompanied them with your own spontaneous, beautiful sounds. Every now and then, you responded to the music with exuberance and abandon. You chirped. You shrieked. You cooed.

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Listening to you also reminded me of my own adult son, who is autistic. When Ezra was a child, my wife and I sometimes hesitated to bring him along to concerts or movies for fear he might do or say the wrong thing. So I was looking forward to introducing myself to the two adults accompanying you, to thank them for bringing you that night. I wanted to tell them what I learned from Dr. Barry Prizant, a visionary autism expert. When parents ask his most important piece of advice for raising a neurodivergent child, he answers: “Get them out in the world—with appropriate supports.” The more the child experiences, the more they will learn to adapt to new situations and people.

That’s why I was so disappointed to see you leave your seats before Bell had finished his performance. A few minutes earlier, I had observed an audience member sitting near you get up to approach an usher, who then strode up the aisle. Shortly after that, you and your party made a quick exit. I wasn’t certain why, but at intermission, I overheard the person who had approached the usher comment that they don’t get out much for entertainment, and they just wanted to enjoy the music. Perhaps they assumed your sounds were intentional and that someone should have done more to silence you.

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What saddens me is that the evening could have ended so differently. A few years ago, just as a Boston orchestra finished a Mozart piece, a different little boy reacted with a “Wow!” so loud that the audience laughed and then broke into applause. It turned out he was autistic and rarely spoke at all. An audio recording of his utterance went viral, attracting headlines and even inspiring a children’s picture book, “The Boy Who Said Wow.” “It was one of the most wonderful moments I’ve experienced in the concert hall,” the orchestra’s president said at the time.

More..

https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/relationships/what-i-wanted-to-tell-the-autistic-boy-at-the-concert-270ce415?st=qNbCcV&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

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