Autism | Calderism

Calder has a bad habit of eating with his hands. Fine motor skills are really hard for him, and if you’ve been reading Calderism, you know Calder loves food. When he’s got a bowl of rice, or chili, or homemade pasta, he loses all patience and dives right in with…

When Calder gets hungry, he gets hungry. He will act as if he is starving and if you walked by, you would think, “this kid has never eaten a meal in his life.” But Calder does eat. In fact, he eats extremely well. He enjoys homemade gluten-free brownies, cornbread, chocolate…

No one likes it when their body doesn’t do what they want to do. No one likes it when they’re walking and their knee gives out or the ankle rolls. And for Calder, it’s much worse. He constantly holds his breath which leads to his body flopping

ust about every group of siblings fights with each other. Sometimes it’s for a legitimate reason, but I would say that probably 90 percent of the time it’s over nothing and we just fight to, well, fight. I’m the oldest in the family and Calder is the baby, and Dash…

Strawberry Swing is a song by the band Coldplay that I have heard at least a trillion times, and that’s not an exaggeration. It’s not a song I have ever sought out. I’m pretty sure it’s not even a song I like. No, every single time I have heard this…

Show me a kid who likes to shop for furniture and I’ll show you Calder. While most kids his age would rather be playing video games, watching cartoons, exploring the toy store, or hanging out at the park, Calder is always asking us to take him to “the real fun…

From an outside perspective it looks like Calder can’t understand anything – but he does. Sometimes people think he’s stupid, a fact I am very much aware of because I have had friends ask me about him: “Does he know that he shouldn’t eat dirt?” “Does he know not to…