Living with Autism ; A Mother and Son Share How They Eased Social Interactions

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Jean-Paul Bovee was about 3 years old when doctors diagnosed him with delayed-onset autism. At first, things seemed normal, but as he got older, it was clear something was wrong.

Bovee had a good vocabulary. "He had words to sing songs, but he didn't have words for communication," said Julie Donnelly, Bovee's mother and autism consultant for Project ACCESS, a state educational autism agency. "He wasn't picking up the skills that a typical kid does. He didn't play. He wasn't interested in other kids. ... He had a lot of the classic symptoms of autism."

Bovee's autism was diagnosed in the early 1970s. During this time, not much was known about the disorder. His …