Verified by 
My autistic son first connected with me over a book, when he was maybe 4 or 5 months old. I didn’t know he had autism yet, but I did know that he was developing very differently than we expected. Up until then, we had bonded with feeding and physical play. But that day, 30 years ago, when I was reading Corduroy to Nat, stands out in my mind as the first time he seemed aware of me in a way that had nothing to do with basic needs. I remember reading the story a couple of times in a row to my son, who listened intently, and then, on the third or fourth time, in the end, he took the closed book from me, and then handed it back to me, making three soft grunts. I realized with a breathless, fragile pleasure that he was telling me to read it again.
When I understood this, that he had connected his enjoyment of hearing a story to me, I was giddy with happiness and relief. And for the next eight years, reading with Nat was everything; books were the main way we enjoyed each other. Books became the best Nat gift. He memorized books, he acted them out. He learned, at last, to talk using phrases from his books.
But as he grew older, even though he had learned to read, he stopped wanting to read. This was a real and aching loss for me, and what made this worse is that it coincided with him becoming aggressive. By the time he was 10, it was a real challenge just living with him, let alone interacting pleasantly.
The one thing I found I could do with him was bake. And this was something I could do with him and my two younger sons as well. The baking high points of the year were birthdays when we would come up with a themed cake based on that year’s new interest, then we constructed a three-dimensional cake. Our cakes were ugly but legendary. We have built cake-and-pretzel stick roller coasters, cake swimming pools, cake scenes from Lost, and a cake of Dante’s Inferno with actual levels of Hell and a lot of red dye.
Baking remained a great thing to do with my boys, even as young men when they’re around for holidays. And during the Pandemic lockdown last year, when Nat had moved out of his group home to live with us, for safety, we began to bake daily. We baked something different every single day, even on our Cape vacations. We had a ritual, Nat would choose from our cookbooks by pointing and just a little talking (he prefers nonverbal communication), we would find a recipe and make it together. We’d post our creations on Facebook, and his baking became legendary in our circles. Everyone wanted Nat’s cookies. I decided that we should run a make-shift bakery, with aprons and stickers. My youngest son Ben designed the logo, my husband bought us special bakery bags, and Sweet Batch Bakery was born. We baked and shipped cookies to friends and family, we handed them through the screen door to our neighbors. Baking was Nat’s thing.
In the late spring, our lives went back to normal, and Nat went back to his group home and his adult life away from us. Every weekend, however, he would come home and expect to bake with me, and we still had a great time doing this together, even though he had gotten into a rut and only wanted to bake the same thing all the time: Homemade Oreos. When November and his 32nd birthday approached, I knew I wanted to get him a new baking cookbook and find some new recipes. Stretch his baking passion to lead him into something different, new projects. And maybe into more reading.
I took him to our local bookstore, to the wall of baking books. I figured that if he could actually pick one out himself, maybe he’d be more invested in it and could try something new. I wanted him to really see it, to read the recipe names, to notice, to imagine. I started by making a big show out of the book selection process. I would pull out a cookie cookbook, read the title, show him the cover, and open it, and read the recipe names out loud to him. Then I would hand him the book to look at himself. I only realized later that we’d gone back to the Corduroy ritual, kind of in reverse. And to our mutual delight, it worked again: He found one he really wanted. This was the first time he had ever picked out a present for himself that had real meaning to him. Once again books have opened up a whole new set of connections for us.
It doesn't hurt that this book also has a great Oreo recipe.
