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.

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

I'm a novelist who read a lot as a kid. When you grow up on books and then grow up to write books, famous authors are a lot more meaningful to you than TV and movie stars.

For a long time our son was 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.

Even if you plan a marriage and a family, you are never quite prepared for the reality versus how you imagined it. In a lot of ways it's better, and in a lot of ways it's worse. That's life, right?

My mother's side of the family, they're from Montserrat in the Leeward Islands.

I love it right now. I love being retired. I think I retired at a perfect time in my career. Now I get an opportunity to spend time with my wife and kids and get to be very supportive of them. My son is playing football right now. My daughter is in gymnastics. Both are competing at a high level. So it came at the right time.

The benefit a father can confer on his son is to make him fit to occupy the front rank in the assembly of the learned.