Juggling Autism: The Chronicles of Ben Royko

“Yeah, how can those even EXIST?!” said Tom Owley, with a tone of hushed reverence that caught me off guard, even if it shouldn’t have. Tom wasn’t a classical music geek per se, but he was a music (and art,

Ben likes jobs. As Karen and I are getting ready to head back to Chicago, one of our routines is Ben (and I) take out the trash and go get the mail. Moms and Dads (to be stereotypical) can be

Our apartment building in Cleveland has a kid’s room, and Ben treats it as a sort-of lending library for books. Usually it’s nice and tidy, but on Sunday, it looked like a toddler tornado had just breezed through. Sometimes I

WARNING — This has nothing to do with Ben or with autism (even if it does have something to do with Cleveland where we wouldn’t be if it weren’t for Ben and autism so…)! And if you aren’t particularly interested

As I wrote in the other day’s blog post, Ben’s a bonafide videocall fan. I spared you from having to gaze at my mug in those pics of Ben (thank the photo editing app), but this new one is as-it-is.

For years, we tried to do videocalls with Ben, but there had always been issues with signal strength and other technical hurdles. The bigger hurdle was probably Mom and Dad not being hip to the videocall trip – we didn’t

A few folks have mentioned that they were trying to get to this piece on my (glitch-prone) website, to no avail (and it’s possible the Chgo Trib has or will be moving it from their free archive to their for-pay

EESINNUH By David Royko ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~ Republished here at the request of a Facebook friend, Eesinnuh was the first piece I wrote about Ben and our family’s struggles with severe autism. He was eight years old. Originally written in February

Kinda like “Six Characters in Search of an Author,” this post was heading toward Twelve Pictures in Search of a Theme. After I came up blank trying to find something to tie them all together, I realized, duh, BEN’s all

Years ago, I reviewed a book (excellent, BTW) by the late Clara Park, about her autistic daughter Jessy (Exiting Nirvana), and one of the most powerful take-aways for me was the idea that most of the wonderful people that work