Claire LaZebnik quotes

Sometimes people say that kids with autism aren't capable of love. That's ridiculous. My son loves deeply. He's just doesn't communicate well. (Claire LaZebnik)

Every time you look at a house in Los Angeles, the real-estate agent will tell you that someone famous once lived there. It always seemed irrelevant to me: Does a property gain value just because Alfred Hitchcock used to eat breakfast there?

Claire LaZebnik

Don't think that there's a different, better child 'hiding' behind the autism. This is your child. Love the child in front of you. Encourage his strengths, celebrate his quirks, and improve his weaknesses, the way you would with any child. You may have to work harder on some of this, but that's the goal.

Claire LaZebnik

I got lost in him, and it was the kind of lost that's exactly like being found.

Claire LaZebnik

No one's family is normal. Normalcy is a lie invented by advertising agencies to make the rest of us feel inferior.

Claire LaZebnik

For a long time our son ws a little boy with autism, which was a certain kind of challenge. Now that he's a teenager with autism - and a teenager who notices girls - we're faced with something else altogether.

Claire LaZebnik

I was isolated but not ostracized, ignored but not abused.

Claire LaZebnik

When our son's autism was diagnosed at the age of 2, there was no clear prognosis. We didn't even know if he'd ever learn to talk. But we found talented people to work with him and he improved, slowly at first and then more rapidly.

Claire LaZebnik

Kids don't talk like adults, but kids on the spectrum don't necessarily fall into the same patterns of speaking or have the same interests as other kids their age.

Claire LaZebnik

Once your kid reaches middle school, parents are really supposed to fade out of the social picture. Kids are supposed to make their own plans, keep up with sophisticatedly crude discussions, and be able to go out on their own without supervision.

Claire LaZebnik

But I know how this romantic stuff works: one girl's perfect guy is another girl's reject. And right now I'm glad of it. (Claire LaZebnik)

Value people because of who they were deep down, not because of their names or their parents' clout.

Claire LaZebnik

Basically, the world is a giant shithole. But some of us are capable of imagining something better.

Claire LaZebnik

I cursed myself not only for forgetting to turn my phone off but for ever thinking that having a rock music ringtone was cool.

Claire LaZebnik

Man, I hated not being able to figure someone out. And from the slightly uncertain look he gave me as we all went to class, I suspected he felt the same way.

Claire LaZebnik

One advantage to having a kid on the spectrum: they tend to be rule followers. Socially, things are harder for them than most kids.

Claire LaZebnik

I love science. I hate supposition, superstition, exaggeration and falsified data. Show me the research, show me the results, show me the conclusions - and then show me some qualified peer reviews of all that.

Claire LaZebnik

Hope for the best, survive the worst, find humor wherever you can.

Claire LaZebnik

My son, who's on the spectrum is a very rigid thinker. He needs clear-cut definitions of right and wrong. Anything hazy or gray confuses him. For instance, if I try to get him to see that a friend behaved badly, he'll often get upset with me because a friend is a 'good guy' by definition, in his book.

Claire LaZebnik