Here is an article Malcolm’s mother, Maria (a regular contributor to the Broad Street Review), wrote about the effect he had on some inner-city children.
My days have been overstuffed, of late, but when Sue Schaeffer called with an SOS, I decided to help. Sue, who uses a wheelchair, is a passionate advocate for people with disabilities. She knows that my son, Malcolm, is on the autism spectrum. She was hoping that Malcolm and I could share something of his experience with some elementary school kids as part of an after-school program in Lancaster’s version of the inner city, replacing her scheduled presenter who had canceled at the last minute.
I arrived a bit late, and was happy to find the children seated and relatively quiet. Malcolm isn’t overly verbal, so I knew the communicating part would be up to me. At least, I thought it would, although as it turned out, Malcolm said a lot without using a single word.
An unexpected business
The topic I chose was Malcolm’s Tiles, the business I have been running on my son’s behalf since August, growing out of his obsession with an amusement park in the Netherlands he’d seen on YouTube. At first, I thought that Julianatoren was a girl. I explained to him repeatedly that you can’t meet random European females you’ve seen online, only to discover that he was talking about a park named after Queen Juliana. Autistic people can be very persistent; he was driving me crazy, so I told him that when he becomes a famous artist, he can treat his family to a trip.
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