"I don't know if I'm going to make it, love." "Yeah, you will." "I don't see them, Tulga." "What's your name?" "What's your name?" "In April 2004, my son Rowan was diagnosed with autism." "The feeling was like being hit... across the face with a baseball bat." "Grief." "Shame." "This weird, irrational shame, like I'd somehow cursed this child by giving him my faulty genetics." "Watching horrified as he began drifting away to another place." "But this story isn't about the tragedy of autism." "This is a story about how, as a family, we did something crazy." "How we ended up going halfway across the world... in search of a miracle," "but let's start at the beginning." "December 27, 2001." "My wife, 8 months pregnant, and I were at a friend's house having tea... when, like something straight out of a movie, she suddenly went into contractions." "One quick C-section later, while they brought Kristin round from the anesthetic," "I stood alone in the private room with this little boy... we'd already decided to call Rowan." "The clock on the wall said half past midnight... which meant, I realized, that Rowan had decided to come into the world... exactly seven years to the day, and almost to the hour, that Kristin and I had first spoken." "Are we going to tell the story ofhow we met?" "Well, you start because the first day I didn't talk to you." "That's right." "Of course she wouldn't talk to me." "Um, who would?" "I wouldn't." "But we met in India." "I'd been hired to write a guidebook to the region." "She was there doing research for her RhD in psychology." "We couldn't have been more different." "I was British, brought up partly in London, and partly on a farm training horses." "Kristin was a suburban girl from California." "But the moment I saw her, a voice in my head said, clear as day," ""That's your wife."" "Yeah, that's right." "The first night he said, he asked me to marry him, and, um- Must have been mad." "Yeah, and I" "And I said, "How many women have you asked to marry you before?"" "So I lied and said, "None." Oh, it was a lie?" "We embarked on seven years of travel and adventure." "We finally married, and settled in Texas, where Kristin got a job as a professor of psychology." "And I continued my career in journalism and human rights, working mainly with the Bushmen of Southern Africa's Kalahari." "When Rowan was born, and we began living as a family, it was like everything had finally fallen into place." "¶ Swing me just a little bit higher ¶" "¶ Oba dia do ¶¶ And then, it all fell apart." "The world had once been our oyster." "Now it had narrowed down to just getting through the next day." "No one could even give us a definitive explanation of what autism even was." "Now autism obviously means a lot of different things to a lot of people." "One could argue that people have different definitions." "All right, I'll have a go." "Autism is due to neurological abnormalities... in the early growth of the brain." "Autism is a neurological impairment... that influences a person's ability... to view the world in a socially typical way." "I had to learn social skills." "Social skills can be taught." "But sort of social chitchat just for social relatedness, I'm not into that." "In autism the brain is able to detect more information." "If their brain is being flooded by lots of detail that the rest of us miss, that could simply get in the way ofbeing able to interact socially." "In addition the person has very narrow interests... in specific topics- sometimes these are called obsessions." "Today we see autism as a big spectrum... that can range from the severely mentally retarded person... who is completely nonverbal... to somebody who is a socially awkward mathematics or physics professor." "Our lives became clogged under a mountain... of conflicting literature and information on the disorder." "The possible causes, treatments and prognosis." "We tried everything." "Behavioral analysis, pills, creams, diets" "We were out of options." "He didn't speak to us, spent hours lining up objects obsessively, was completely isolated from other kids... and subject to endless tantrums." "I'm sorry, sweetheart." "His tantrums came in waves, several times a day, lasting sometimes up to four hours." "Autism tantrums, they're not like normal tantrums." "They're often neurological in origin, which means the child is unreachable, impossible even to console." "Point to where it hurts." "Does it hurt here?" "Did it hurt here?" "Is it here?" "He's got a red mark here." "That's a big mosquito bite." "I think maybe that mosquito bite has inflamed- It's gone." "The flea is gone." "The what is gone?" "The flea?" "The flea?" "There's a flea?" "Okay." "Oh, oh" "Hey." "Do you want to see the baby goats?" "Goats?" "Baby goats?" "Penguin!" "More hippo." "Here we go." "I want more hippo." "You want more hippo?" "I'd been keeping Rowan away from horses, because I thought he was unsafe around them." "But one day, he ran away from me onto the property of my neighbor, Stafford, and ran right up to his old mare, a horse called Betsy." "She didn't spook." "Instead, her reaction was so gentle, so submissive," "I realized immediately that he had some direct line to her." "The moment I put Rowan on Betsy's back, he began to speak." "He's a nice horse." "This deep relaxation, it's such a rare thing for him." "There's something going on between them that... even with all my years of dealing with horses, I just have never seen." "It's this mystery- but it's a very beautiful mystery." "Just like autism is a mystery." "Feels like a- a warm sunny day after winter." "As Rowan began to open up to me for the first time, a lightbulb went on in my head." "I asked myself, why does autism have to mean the shutting down of everything?" "Why couldn't it be a gateway into adventure?" "Maybe even a gateway into healing?" "It may sound odd, but I have something of a history with traditional healing." "In the course of my work with the Bushmen," "I had, during the previous 10 years, been introduced into their world ofhealing through the use of a shaman." "The Bushmen, and many peoples like them, address their spiritual dilemmas, their health dilemmas, their social dilemmas, even their political dilemmas, through the use of a trained shaman, who enters a state of trance," "talks to the spirits, and comes back with an answer." "As unbelievable as it may sound, in my years of working with the Bushmen," "I have seen many times, people cured of a variety of illnesses this way." "So I asked myself, was there a place on earth... that combined this kind of shamanic healing with horses?" "I did some research." "It turned out that the place where horseback riding actually originated... is the same place, the one place on earth, where shamanism is in fact the state religion:" "Mongolia." "You want to jump with Betsy?" " Jump with Betsy!" "Okay, let's jump with Betsy." "Betsy!" "Okay, let's go!" "Oh!" "Oh, no!" "Betsy!" "What if we were to go there, riding on horseback from healer to healer?" "What if we were to do something like that?" "When he first proposed the idea I just looked at him like, this is crazy." "We have an autistic son." "Incredibly difficult to deal with just getting through each day." "This is the absolute last thing we need in our life right now... is to go to Mongolia on horseback." "It's just-It's just insane." "I mean, I don't even like horses." "We're going to try to keep our tantruming autistic son on the horse?" "Going from shaman to shaman?" "Is this going to work?" "But that, eventually, is exactly what I convinced her to do,:" "Together we were to set off from Ulaanbaatar, meeting with shamans along the way, then to a sacred lake, Lake Sharga, known for its healing waters, and finally, if we could find them, to the mysterious reindeer herders," "who live in the far north... where, I heard, the most powerful healer in all Mongolia lived." "Aero-plane!" "Aero-plane!" "This is just- It's just absurd." "Our guide, Tulga, picked us up at the airport and took us into the capital, Ulaanbaatar." "I don't know what I was expecting exactly, but this depressed, post-Soviet city wasn't quite it." "I'd expected the open steppe." "Nomads, horses, Genghis Khan and all his warriors, not an urban slum." "I think it wasn't exactly Rowan's vision of Mongolia." "So look, here we are in the autism world." "I'm preparing his morning chocolate milk." "These are all meds that are related to his autism." "This is Valtrex, which is the drug for herpes." "Okay, so we're gonna grind this up." "Then there's the heavy metals." "This is to help him metabolize the heavy metals that we know are in his body." "Vitamin E." "Yeast defense." "So this is to sort of help him with his gut." "Which isn't helping." "Which doesn't appear to be doing anything at all, but it can't do him any harm- so what the hell." "And then this one here- I even forget why we're giving him this one here." "That's right- it's another type of antiviral... that the doctor thinks might help as well to supplement the Valtrex." "Right." "So, shake it up." "Okay." "That's ready for him when he gets up." "Nobody knows what really causes autism." "Autism, like many other disorders, is very complex." "These days there is a consensus that genetics... is going to be at the root of the cause." "But we know that genes are not going to be the whole explanation." "Recently, there seems to be more problems with very severe autism... that remains nonverbal, and is regressive autism." "And I'm very concerned about environmental contaminants." "One theory of autism is that individuals with autism... are, you might say, a reaction to our environment." "There's a lot of pollutants out there, there's heavy metals, there are pesticides." "This is having a huge impact on the human body." "There isn't much doubt that... an environmental factor will eventually be established." "And it may be that it has to interact with the genes." "That that environmental factor only contributes to autism... in an individual who's already got a genetic susceptibility." "Before our arrival," "Tulga had been putting the word out that Rowan was coming." "The result was that shamans were traveling in from all over the country for the healing, in what we were told would be the largest gathering of shamans... since the end of Communism." "We're going up to the sacred mountain... outside of Ulaanbaatar- Tsegan UI is the name of it." "And, um, nine shamans... are going to meet us there, and perform a ritual on Rowan." "I'm quite hopeful." "I think it could be... interesting for all of us." "We're going to do what all normal families do on a- what day is it today- morning." "Um, we're going to go up a several-thousand-foot mountain... and perform a four-hour ritual with shamans." "Isn't that what all families do?" "Come herel" "We gotta go back!" "Ruin!" "Tell you what, Rowan." "Let's go take a little walk down to the river." " Do you want to have a walk down to the river?" " I walk down to the river." "Hello." "Thank you for seeing us." "Uh, is really happy to receive you in Mongoli land, and, uh, his land and our land." "You come here and, really happy to receive you here." "Well, we're very grateful to be here." "Don't step on that, sweetie." "He's all right." "Yeah." "Mental illness." "In fact, all the shamans concurred... that a recent ancestor, a female ancestor, on Kristin's side, was somehow clinging to Rowan." "Rerhaps trying to harm him, or even pull him away." "Lfhe doesn't want to have a drink of it, is it okay, or can we?" "Have some water." "Here's some more water." "Have some water." "Water." "Out of the box." "Water." "Water." "Water." "Water." "What's that?" "It's water." "It's water." "It's white water." "White water." "Tastes like water." "Taste it." "Just take a little sip." "Water!" "Take a little drink." "Drink!" "Water, water!" "Water!" "Uh-huh." "Okay." "Okay." "Okay." "Can it be over the clothes?" "No?" "Okay." "All right." "Okay, okay." "The shamans also said that a black energy... had entered Kristin's womb during the pregnancy." "Yeah, just don't show my cellulite, that's all I ask." "All right." "You can Photoshop that, can't you?" "I don't want this." "I've gotta go see the shaman." "I couldn't help wondering, did I really have his best interest at heart here?" "Was I being a terrible father?" "I didn't know." "¶ There is a house built out of stone ¶" " ¶ Wooden floors, walls and window sills ¶" " Is he gonna whip me?" "¶ Tables and chairs worn by all of the dust ¶" "¶ This is a place ¶" "¶ Where I don't feel alone ¶" "¶ This is a place ¶" "Okay." "Remember, you're not allowed to cry out, love." "Higher." "High." "Higher." "Okay, that's fine." "Okay, it's all gone now." "All right." "Okay." "Yeah, I have them too." "Well done." "I'm proud of you." "Come here." "Come here." "Excuse my craziness." "And then something happened." "Something was released." "Rowan began laughing, giggling, playing with the shamans." "Hey!" "We were together again, as a family." "¶ Until ¶" "¶ It disappeared ¶" "¶ From me ¶" "¶ From you ¶" "Clouds gathered." "A cool wind got up, and the rains came." "A very good sign, said the shamans." "¶ To leave ¶" "¶ And turn ¶¶" "Thank you." "After the last shaman had finished," "Rowan turned to this small Mongolian boy... who'd been there at the ceremony." "And right out of the blue, hugged him, and said, "Mongolian brother."" "He'd never done anything like this before." "The boy's name was Tomoo, the 6-year-old son of Tulga, our guide." "After seeing the boys'interaction," "Tulga decided to bring Tomoo on the trip with us." "Next morning, we set off... into the great interior of Mongolia." "Ten hours'drive to the first nomad camp, where we were to meet the guides and horses... who would take us to Lake Sharga and its healing waters." " Are they gonna play together?" " I think they might." "This is very unusual." "This is totally unusual." "Rlaying with another kid like that." "Very unusual." "I haven't seen him do that kind of interactive play before, ever, actually." "No." "No, no." "The most he's ever done with another child is play chase." "But to actually have a sword fight and then- Never done that before." "Talking about being a pirate." "Never done that before." "Take this pirate ship." "Very, very cool kid, Tulga's son." "Yeah." "Ow." "That's really encouraging." "Isn't it." "How do you like it?" "You don't like it?" "I don't like it?" "Or" " Or, you like it?" "Or?" "Oh, yeah!" "No, no, I'm doing a little dance." "Okay." "All I know is we went to see the shaman, and now, two days later, we're seeing even more involved play... that I've never seen before ever." "Is this because of the shamans?" "Isn't this because of the shamans?" "All I know is, we went to the shamans, and now this is happening." "Hey, Rowan, can you go poopie on the potty?" "Can you go poopie on the potty?" "Yes, I do." "Yes, you do!" "Do a poopie!" "Do a poopie!" "No!" "No?" "Can you do poopie on the potty?" "All done!" "All done?" "All done poopie?" "I don't think he's ever successfully gone poo in the potty." "Rretty much everything the books tell you you should try doing, we've tried, and have had no success." "We took him out of diapers because we just thought if we didn't, he'd be in diapers forever." "So we just have him wear underwear, and hope that... it's going to be so uncomfortable pooping in your underwear... that he'll eventually be potty-trained." "Although it doesn't seem to be working out that way very much." "All right, let me just make sure you're covered." "If I could make one wish for the Mongoli trip, if they could like, heal his resistance to using the potty." "That is a very big wish." "He could finally learn to use the potty." "It would make our lives tremendously easier." "I'm so tired of changing poopie underpants, I can't even tell you." "Man." "Yuck." "I've got a little plastic bag in there." "Jesus Christ." "This is a bad one." "Get you all clean." "You sure you want this?" "Wow, that was- that was an explosion, mate." "I don't feel quite as glamorous as Steve Irwin, but I do feel like I just wrestled with a beast." "Okay." "And at least the rainstorm hasn't hit." "Yet." "That was what you call a Code Brown." "Here we are." "Our first night." "Horses here?" "Yes." "Horses here." "We've just arrived at our first nomadic encampment." "This is Rowan's first introduction to Mongolia proper." "He's just, um, totally into it." "Oh, on we get." "Hold the horn." "For tonight, we set up tent." "Of course, the kitchen makes food." "Also, the horses are already there, and we will be seeing our horses, which have been prepared for us." "So they've been trained horses for... three days, minimum, yeah." "Right?" "So we're going to be riding on horses that have never been ridden by Westerners before." "This should be interesting." "Oh, dear." "Mmm." "God, this is beautiful." "Oh, hello, mister goats!" "No, I'm with the goats." "In we go." "Rowan's relationship with animals is extraordinary." "All these animals are incredibly tolerant ofhim." "They let him do stuff that neurotypical kids often can't get away with." "He" " He picks them up, he chucks them around." "And they won't- the cat won't scratch him." "The goats just sort of go limp and let him do this." "And we see this time and time again." "He's got something with animals." "And he's always been obsessed with animals." "Reople with autism often have incredibly special talents." "And they do things better than somebody that might not have autism." "For example, the ability to focus on a very narrow topic, to the exclusion of everything else, may be a very positive thing." "We've come across some who are excellent painters, excellent musicians, excellent at math." "You wouldn't have any electricity in this building." "You wouldn't have any camera to film this interview." "Any of these things if you didn't have people on some degree on the autism spectrum." "So some of those genes that are involved in autism... may also have been very important as contributors... to the success of humanity." "So now this week, I came in, and I found that he had started... putting his animals in boxes, and sorting them." "Look- all the birds are in this box here." "The rhinos and the pigs are together." "They are biologically close to each other." "No one's told him this." "The camel, the bison and the musk ox are together- the large cloven-hoofed animals." "Now it gets interesting." "This is plains game:" "Buffalo, zebra, kudu, gemsbok antelope." "He knows that these animals group together." "He must" "I guess he's observed this in a wildlife documentary." "Um, and then over here all by itself in a special box, is the horse." "So, he's categorizing correctly, at age four, the genuses and species, and what their relationship is to each other." "But no one's told him this." "So this, if you like, is a really good allegory... of the mind of the autistic kid." "In" " In some ways, um, really advanced." "But also, if you say, "Hi, little boy, what's your name?"" "He'll completely blank you." "But the locals, they say to us, um, you brought the rain." "It hasn't been raining like this." "They like to say, uh, the man bringing rain... has to be really, really good person." "So we respect the person... and offer many good foods... and be more polite with the people." "So, Tulga, do you want to just tell us what we've got here?" "We got sausages, and, um, lung and liver, and hearts." "Oh." "Cheers." "Thank you for having us." "All right, so, I'm going to start with this one." "Piece by piece." "Mm-hmm." "This is the- I think it's the lung." "Mmm, lung, my favorite." "That's, um, really challenging." "You're enjoying this, aren't you?" "Oh, yeah." "I'm enjoying." "That's, um" "I can only say this in English, but that's really horrible." "Um, but I'm going to eat it anyway." "It can go... pretty good with, uh, some fats with it." "Look!" "There's Daddy!" "Whoo-hool Hey." "Hey!" "No, thank youl" "Car!" "Do you wanna go into my car?" "Take" " Here." "Carl Carl" "Car." "I want a car." "Go to the car?" "Let's go to the car." "Yeah." "We'll go to the car." " But, you know" "Car!" "To the car." "To the car?" "Say, "Car, please, Daddy."" "I'm feeling a little anxious right now." "Um, I don't know if I'm doing the right thing." "It just makes you feel a little bit like, what are we putting him through?" "It is hard." "It's stressful." "It's difficult." "Guys, we have to get moving." "Car!" "Car!" "Car!" "We've waited almost too long." "All right, I'm going to keep getting moving." "Let's get moving." "I'd never seen Rowan reject a horse before." "Never seen him tantrum on a horse." "The horse was always the place where his tantrums went away." "I can't ride on the horse." "I'm just so tired and exhausted." "Really?" "And we've only been- You have to kick every single step." "Do you want to take this horse?" "And to trot I've got to like" "Do you want to take this horse?" "If you can change saddles." "Um, it'll take long to change." "Do you need that saddle?" "I'll ride in the van." "Jeremy's going to ride and see if he does better." "Jeremyl Jeremy?" "Sit tightl Sit tightl Sit tightl" "Whoal Oh, dearl Oh" " Oh, Shitl" "Oh, Jesus Christl" "Oh, man." "See, it is a butt-fucker of a horsel" "Are you okay, sweetie?" "You wanna get down?" "Okay, you can get down." "But the problem is every time we stop like this" "Mummy." "You want to go see Mummy?" "You want to ride in the car with Mummy for a bit?" "Okay." "Oh!" "I'm sorry." "I'm in a very negative mood." "That was one of the most uncomfortable half hours I've ever spent in my life." "All right." "Well, enjoy the ride in the car for a bit." "Okay." "And so, my son took off, into the center of Mongolia, in the back of a van with leopard-skin seats and pink curtains." "And... count!" "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, stop!" "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, stop!" "You want to do that?" "Yes, please, or no, thank you?" "Yes, please!" "Okay, let's do it!" "And, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, stop!" "In my daydream, this trip to Mongolia would bring him by himself riding." "Him not having to sit there in the saddle with me." "Him riding, by himself." "Every parent who has this passionate interest... wants to share that passionate interest with their child." "But it's more than that." "If Rowan can ride, then he's free." "Then he's got freedom." "If that's something that could come of this trip, then... that alone would be- would be everything to me." "...seven, eight, nine, stop!" "Eventually we let him out to play at a river, and Tulga took off with the van to try and find a mountain... where he could get a cell phone reception." "That was a mistake." "The van was now Rowan's anchor of comfort in this unfamiliar place." "Now it suddenly wasn't there." "The result?" "Total meltdown." "Oh, oh, oh, he's pooing, I think." "Are you going poopie?" "Gotta get clean." "Okay, we can use water from the water bottle." "Switch off the camera and come and help us." "Wrongl" "We gotta go home!" "Eagle!" "Eagle!" "What's wrong?" "The van's coming." "The van will be here in about one minute." "Already." "Do you see?" "Yep." "There it is." "See, there's the van." "The van's over there." "You want me, hon?" "You want me, hon?" "Oh, poor darling." "Okay, van's coming." "Van's coming." "Van's coming." "Van's coming." "There's the van." "You do?" "I completely fucked up." "I turned, through just not thinking straight, a delightful experience for him, into a pretty traumatic experience for him." "And what that is teaching me... is I've got to abandon any adult agenda." "And it's funny, I hadn't even really realized until this moment that I kind of had one." "So I let him down." "And the important thing is just to... remember why we're here, and why we're here is for him." "It's the good and the right lesson to have learned." "Grr." "Up!" "Down." "Up!" "Down." "Get the geesel Get Tomoo." "Chase the geesel We're chasing the geesel" "I guess I'm forgiven." "It's pretty cool, huh?" "What an adventure." "What an adventure." "I love my son." "And he loves you." "That's a good thing." "¶ Yes, Tommy was a piper's son ¶" "¶ He learned to play when he was young ¶" "¶ But the only tune that he would play ¶" "¶ Was "Over the Hills and Far Away" ¶" "¶ O'er the hills and o'er the main ¶" "¶ Through Flanders, Portugal and Spain ¶" "¶ King George commands and we obey ¶" "¶ Over the hills and far away ¶" "¶ There's 40 shillings on the drum ¶" "¶ For those who volunteer to come ¶" "¶ To list and fight the foe today ¶" "¶ Over the hills and far away ¶" "¶ O'er the hills and o'er the main ¶" "¶ Through Flanders, Portugal and Spain ¶" "¶ King George commands and we obey ¶" "¶ Over the hills and far away ¶" "¶ Over the hills and far away ¶" "¶ And I would love you all the day ¶" "¶ Every night would kiss and play ¶" "¶ If for me you gladly ¶" "¶ Stray ¶" "¶ Over the hills and ¶" "¶ Over the hills and ¶" "¶ Far away ¶" "¶ Over the hills and far away ¶¶" "I love you." "Mmm." "Well, it's true." "I'm a" " I'm a better father because of his autism." "I never thought I'd say that." "But there's no question." "I don't think I would have been... that great a dad otherwise." "All right, mate." "Do you want to eat, or do you want to go up to bed?" "You want to go up to bed." "Okay." "I'm a better father because I- his autism forced me to listen to what interested him above all else, and implement it because I had no choice." "Um, I'm glad now that I had no choice." "It was tough at the time, but... we're onto something good here." "Whool" "Very traditional Mongolian fire." "Since the ceremony, I've been having these really vivid dreams, and I dreamt that I saw my grandmother happy, walking away, like she had let go of Rowan." "My dreams have been so powerful lately." "I mean, normally, I don't remember my dreams at all, but I have been here." "But there is definitely a connection with, you know, my grandmother." "All her grief and sadness, and that tendency, that kind of negativity my grandmother really had." "I mean, in a way, she was a black hole." "What's interesting is, you know, because I have a difficult time wholly understanding spirits." "I mean, l-To be honest, I don't really believe in spirits, you know, as kind of actual entities." "I believe in them more as symbolic entities." "What's interesting is that I really saw it as, um" "I saw her spirit as a symbol, or maybe the actual, who knows, of that tendency in the female line... on my mother's side, um, of this real clinging, and just kind of... rage against not wanting things to be other than as they want them to be." "And it's been passed down from her to my mother to me, to Rowan." "My rational mind says, what does all this mean?" "But, you know, there's some connection there." "This is a good-bye photograph." "Good-bye photograph." "One, two, three." "Good-bye, Blackie." "Maybe we can ask the locals if they know which one is good for the brain." "Do you think we could visit the one that's good for the brain?" "Yes, let's do that." "Bye-bye!" "Say "Bye-bye, Blackie!" We decided to take the old man's advice... and head to Lake Sharga and the healing spring, where, so they said, we could wash away our suffering." "So, back into the van we got, for three days'hard travel." "The shamans had given us some homework." "Every night, until we left Mongolia, we had to perform a series of rituals, while praying for whatever negative forces were affecting Rowan to leave him be." "Including, as out there as it sounds even by my standards, the spirit of Kristin's manic-depressive grandmother." "He's just making cognitive advances... at an accelerated rate over the last few days." "I think having Tomoo along is, you know, key to all this." "Do you want, uh, a RainMan cookie?" "No, thank you." "Okay." "What's it taste like?" "Autistic parents only eat RainMan cookies." "Mister shamans?" "Here it was." "Lake Sharga." "Much more beautiful than I thought it would be." "There's the lake." "Look at that." "I wanna go." "All right." "Let's get out." "Let's get out." "I have no idea if any of it has an effect, or if it's just maybe... calling up the focus and the intention for his healing, which in and of itself could be quite powerful." "I don't know how useful it is to think of... us as normal and totally healthy, and Rowan as the sick one, or the ill one." "I think it's way more complicated than that." "We would not be having this amazing crazy adventure across Mongolia... if Rowan was not autistic." "It seems like a curse in some ways, but in many ways, it's a real blessing." "Mmm." "And to allow it to be." "Mm-hmm." "To allow it to be." "And also, this is Rupert's and my life before we had Rowan." "We traveled all over the world." "Yeah, and we just thought we'd never be able to do it again." "Yeah." "You know." "And we tried a couple of times." "And it was a disaster." "Disaster, you know." "And we were terrified that this trip would turn into a real disaster too." "And it hasn't." "Rowan's just been so into it." "And even when he was shaky the first couple of days, he was still into it, you know." "I think something's really shifted with him." "Yeah, he's finding his adventurer's heart." "Yeah." "He is." "I can tell you, this is a fairly hard trip in many ways." "But I've had harder car rides to the grocery store with Rowan." "I mean, seriously." "Haven't you?" "It's true, yeah." "Let's go outside and see if it's there." "Rowan, you're too close." "Well, this is kind of a good lesson in sort of" "This is a high-functioning autistic kid." "You can see, like, sometimes you can go out, and even just to make it 300 yards up a trail... can be, like, massively stressful." "Wow, you really know how to be charming when you ask for things." "Swing." "Come on." "Let's go." "Let's go." "Oh, look." "Here are some more dandy leaves." "Ooh." "I gotta admit." "I'm feeling a little down tonight." "I don't know." "Sometimes I think he's leaping forward, and sometimes it's like he's totally regressing." "I know." "He goes up and down like a Ring-Rong ball." "Am I just kidding myself that I'm not attached to him recovering?" "Will he ever be really functional?" "Will he have to go into an institution when he's older?" "Will he recover?" "Will he surprise us?" "Baby cow." "Let alone will he ever ride a horse by himself." "You know." "I don't know." "Oh!" "No, nol" "Calm down." "No, no, no, no." "Tonight he's basically just like a giant 18-month-old." "And it's very painful for me to see." "Are you okay?" "No, I'm down." "I'm down." "I'm feeling like, with the camera on me, it almost makes me want to cry." "Oh, let's go." "Water on your head." "On your head!" "Ready?" "Whoa!" "Ride the traini" "We're just gonna wait here for now." "Little- Oops, a little bit of waiting." "Why can't let's go soon, Daddy?" "So he's developed an obsession with this train." "And not just with the train, but with these animals here." "Sometimes I've hung out here... for up to two or three hours at a time sometimes." "And I've probably ridden this train 200 times." "Want him on the train?" "If you can." "Thank you." "Thank you very much." "Well, that was lucky." "They let us on." "But it can be quite lonely, sometimes, as you can imagine." "I mean, we spent, you know, the last two and a half years like this a lot of the time, and... it's very rare that you can ever get anyone to come along and do this with you." "And it can get a little lonely." "It's one of the things which I think all parents of autistic kids have to deal with." "I think before a parent can come to acceptance, there's an enormous amount of grieving that has to be done." "I think people are dealing with loss, from the loss of a dream." "I see what comes up is exhaustion... from dealing with behavior problems a lot, from dealing with an environment... that looks at the parent as if they're doing something wrong... because they see a kid that's tantruming... and they just assume that maybe the parent isn't handling it well." "People just don't understand what they're going through." "There are so many fears... that their child, their adult child will be taken advantage of, that there won't be a place for them." "I've worked with families whose adult children are not toilet trained." "They worry that they won't have any friends, that they'll be all alone, and when their family goes, or their parents go, there won't be anybody around to care for them." "Our final destination was far north, near the Russian border, to try and find a group of indigenous people called the Dukha, the reindeer herders." "Before man ever rode a horse, he rode the reindeer, the first large animal to be domesticated at the end of the last ice age." "Now reduced to just 200 people, the Dukha tribe- and everyone agreed on this- had the strongest shamanic tradition of all." "So we're on the second to last day of our long drive, and we just" " Reindeer people." " He wants to get to the reindeer people so bad." "This is for Mommy, and this is for Mommy and Tulga, and this is for Mommy and Tomoo, and this is for Mommy and Tom" "And this is for Mommy and Tomoo." "What's for Mommy and Tomoo?" "Hey, Rowan." "What's for Mommy, Tomoo, Daddy and Tulga?" "That was a giant, giant... motherfucker of a poo last night." "Oh, God, I'm getting so depressed about that." "You know, I just have these visions of him at 14." "Still shitting his pants." "I know." "I don't fully understand why he's so resistant." "So, how are we going to deal with that?" "To try to get him to accept the horses again?" "I'm afraid that he'll just- that he's set up an autistic pattern, where he'll just roundly reject it... because it represents... some unpleasant memory." "And then when we get to the horses again, yes, of course I'm worried." "And, of course, I'll feel a failure and humiliated... and all these things if- ifhe roundly rejects it." "Um, so, thank you for... pressing that insecurity button in me this morning." "That's very" "Aw." "I was trying to- I'm only kidding." "I'm just trying to also prepare myself." "That morning, we waited for the guides and their horses to arrive, to lead us north to the reindeer camps closer to the Russian border." "From here on, there were no more roads." "We'd have to leave the van." "I worried and fretted." "Would Rowan get back on a horse, or would he reject them again?" "Would we actually be able to do this?" "Come on, Rowan." "Let's go." "Okay." "Come on, Rowan." "Okay." "There we go." "Good job." "It's all right." "It's all right." "There we go." "Sit like that." "There we go." "It's all right." "There we go." "It's all right." "Yes, yes." "Do you want to hold the reins?" "I know." "Is he closing his eyes?" "Let's go." "Short ride." "I had to find a way to get him in a better mood-and fast." "I didn't know what to do." "I was searching for inspiration." "And then, the gods of toilet humor spoke to me." "What's that?" "It's a" " A Code Brown!" " It's a Code Brown!" "It's a Code Brown!" "It's a Code Brown!" "Code Brown!" "It's a poopie, poopie, poopie." "Poopie." "What's that?" "It's a- Code Brown!" "Code Brown!" "Oh, no!" "Code Brown!" "Code Brown!" "Code Brown!" "Code Brown!" " What's that?" "Rhinoceros having a Code Brown." "What's that?" "That's a" "Code Brown!" "Code Brown!" "I'm going through the forest to see the reindeer people." "That's right." "You're going through the forest to see the reindeer people." " We wanna ride the reindeer." "Yes." "I want to ride the reindeer." "Do you want to ride the reindeer?" "Thank God Rowan was enjoying riding again, enjoying the adventure, because it took two full days to make the ascent," "12,000 foot up to the summer pastures of the reindeer people, crossing rivers, negotiating bogs, spending eight, nine hours each day in the saddle, wondering the whole time, would we actually make it?" "I no longer had to worry about Rowan, but now Kristin's exhaustion was starting to tell." "And then, just below the highest point of the pass, a horse kicked her." "Did he actually get you?" "Oh." "How hard did he get you?" "No, no." "Just give me two." "Give me two." "Well, if he really got you- Give me two." "Oh, everything just hurts." "I've never really done this kind of mountain riding, so I'm" "I don't know if I'm going to make it, love." "Yeah, you will." "We have two hours." "So, from the pass, we can see reindeer people." "We can see the- We can see the reindeer people, means it's very close." "Oh, okay." "Yeah." "We're going to have a little rest, and then we're going to ride over to the reindeer people." " Okay." "We can go." " See the pass up there, Rowan?" "On the other side?" "Reindeer people." "On the other side is the reindeer people." "We can go." "Yeah?" "Think you can make it?" "Yeah." "Okay." "Wow." "Jesus." "Look behind you." "Wow." "I don't see them, Tulga." "Yes, we're going to go around here to the reindeer people." "The reindeer are just around the corner, are they?" "The reindeer people are just around the corner." "Let me just get back on, 'cause this is killing me." "Yeah, we said they were right around the corner, and we don't see them, so I'm hoping they really are here." "Hope they didn't decide today was moving day." "I hope I don't have to do some difficult explaining." "Reindeer." "To your right." "Where?" "Oh, there's a reindeer." "Look." "See?" "There's a reindeer." "Look at it." "There they are." "How about that?" "Their tepees and satellite dish." "Yeahl" "Oh, my God." "How about that?" "It's the reindeer people's tepees." "Look." "That's where they are." "You made it." "You made it." "All the way." "You made it." "All the way." "I am so proud of you." "You wanna ride the reindeer?" " We do want to ride a reindeer." "Yes." "I really didn't know if we were going to make it." "We actually made it." "That's amazing." "Isn't it?" "Oh, yeah." "You can say thank you very much for letting us... come and drop into their lives like this." "We've come a long way from America... because our child has autism, and we had heard that the shamans of the reindeer people... were both powerful and kind, and so we thought we would bring our boy up here," "just to see if there's any help that could be given." "He says, uh, his father is the person we are going to- to meet." "Uh, he is not well, but we can check with him." "Mm-hmm." "I don't even know the name of the shaman here." "What's his name?" "Uh, Ghoste." "He's definitely the most powerful one in this region." "He said, uh, he can do." "Mmm." "Tulga reported that Ghoste needed a full night to communicate with the spirits... to find out whether he could help Rowan." "Tomorrow, he'd let us know." "It's a reindeerl A reindeerl" "Okay." "Oh, I like the antlers!" "Yeah." "I like the antlers." "He's cute." "He's cute." "Okay." "Time to get off?" "All right." "One more hug and a kiss on the neck." "Awl" "Yeah." "It's fine." " It's okay?" " Let's go hold the baby reindeer." "You wanna hug the baby reindeer?" "Let's go hug the baby reindeer." "Are they cute?" "They have tiny little horns." "The horns are just starting to grow." "Abracadabra!" "Abracadabra?" "What's that?" "That's the back." "Abracadabra." "And this?" "Wilbur." "And..." "Wilbur... and Will... and Lucy and Paige and Portia." "That's amazing." "That's amazing." "Where did he get those names?" "What did he say?" "Daisy and Wilbur?" "I've never seen him just spontaneously name a bunch of animals." "9:00." "Okay." "All right." "Let's go see the shaman." "He said he did some ritual last night" "Uh-huh." "And now he will be in his costume and will talk to him... a little bit." "Thank you." "What's that?" "It's eagle feathers, like an eagle." "Then we can see a hawk in a house." "Mm-hmm." " The hawk was in the house." "The hawk was in the house." "That's right." "Here's the drum." "The drum." "Oh, Rowan, no, no, no, no, no, no." "No, no." "No, no." "No, no, no." "No." "No, don't touch the eagle feathers." "Don't go for his face." "Sit." "Sit with your daddy." "There we go." "Drums." "Don't touch." "Just sit." "Just sit quietly." "Sit quiet with Daddy." "Sit quietly." "Wow." "Wow." "Wow, that's a shaman." "He's an eagle." "He's an" "He's got him on the tree." "An eagle nest." "A mommy bird and a baby bird." "Drink." "Drink." "Drink the water." "Drink the water." "Drink it." "It's okay." "Drink." "Drink it." "He says he'll be fine." "Uh-huh." "He thinks he will be better by tomorrow." "Okay." "Uh-huh." "He said he will come visit us tomorrow." "Okay." "Very good." "That's what" " He" " He said he's leaving this area tomorrow." " Okay." "Uh-huh." "Before it gets too dark, you have to leave." "Okay." "All right." "Okay." "Tell him thank you." "Thank you." ""Take care of your kid." Thank you." "We will." "We will." "Shamansl" "You want more shamans?" "Do you want more shamans?" "Aw." "Shamans!" "There's the shaman." "There." "There's the shaman." "Say "Bye-bye."" "Say "Bye-bye." Say "See you tomorrow," Rowan." "Say "See you tomorrow."" "Okay." "We must go." "Tulga, we must go, he says." "Shaman!" "You wanted to stay there, didn't you?" "Well, I expected him to be... tantruming like that because he didn't want to see the shaman, and didn't want to be in the tent, not because he had to leave." "That's extraordinary." "It's wonderful." "One way of explaining an illness is to say, "Oh, this person is sick."" "Another way of explaining an illness is to say," ""This is a different type of person, and they will have a different role in society."" "One of the most common things that anthropologists have found among, uh, healers, like shamans, is that, almost always, people who are shamans, no matter whether they're in East Africa, or whether they're in Central Asia," "or South America, or Australia, they have gone through some sickness." "And often that illness is an illness... with a constellation of symptoms that are certainly neuropsychiatric." "The shamans don't show neurological symptoms because they're shamans." "They become shamans because they had these neurological symptoms." "We don't know why, but one thing we do know... is that the line between what is a shaman... and the line between, say, a psychoanalyst, is not that clearly drawn." "We are one of the few societies... that treat neurological and psychiatric difference... by creating institutions where we separate people completely from society." "Most other cultures aren't like that." "Obviously I think there's dangers in totally saying," ""Oh, yes, it's the shamans," and... completely buying into that symbol system as well." "I think I'm a little more skeptical than Rupert." "Well, you know, he goes up and down naturally, and we don't know if this is definitely a permanent gain." "So I'm a little more cautious in terms of saying I'm hopeful and things look good." "But I do think it's important... not to expect, like, a miracle cure." "You know, there was a little part of me that was like, after the shamanic ceremony, well, is he going to wake up and be just totally normal?" "And, of course, he wasn't." "Um" "It's outside of my normal experience." "Rut it that way." "We're going to the car." "Maybe I should change my shirt, after five days." "L- Just a thought." "Ghoste had told us the night before... that Rowan would become gradually less autistic over the next three years." "But most importantly, the stuff that really drove us crazy- the incontinence, the tantruming- these would end today." "We would start to see them leave right now." "I was guarding my heart." "I didn't want to allow myself to be disappointed." "There we go." "Say good-bye to shaman." "Say good-bye." "Good-bye." "Are you doing a taste test?" "Now it's time to- He is leaving." "It's time to take Rowan." "Say good-bye to the shaman." "Good-bye to the shaman." "Thank you for the healing." "And with that, it was finally time to go home." "As we rode away, and down the mountain, just as Ghoste had said, that indeed... was when everything began to change." "Ahl" "Echo!" "Oh, my God." "I can't believe it." "He's doing an intentional pool" "He just totally did it." "He did it." "That's the first stage to the potty." "That is success." "That is success right there." "Excellent!" "Outdoor squatting pool Whoo-hool" "That's incredible." "Incredible." "Brilliant." "You are brilliant." "Brilliant!" "Brilliant!" "Rowan poopied on the potty!" "You're brilliant!" "You're brilliantl" "You're brilliant!" "Okay, to pooping in the toilet." "This is the start of something new." "Yea!" "He's wanting to play with the other kids, and not with us." "Like most normal little kids, they wanna play with each other, not with their parents." "This has never happened before where he's just totally involved with them and totally ignoring us." "It's amazing." "And he's one of them, you know?" "Do I think it was the shamans?" "My honest answer is, yeah, of course, I do." "I'm open to the possibility that there is... something happening with the shamanic way of understanding things." "But on the other hand, I'm open to the idea... that just when you take a kid, and you take him to Mongolia, and you push him to their limits, they have to confront challenges they wouldn't otherwise, and that may be the cause of it." "What does it matter?" "What matters is that he's leapt forward, and that we came here, and it happened." "That's what matters." "Now I'll say a little prayer for all of us that live with autism, whether we're autistic, or whether we're the parents of autistic kids, or whether we know people who have autistic kids," "whether it's our grandson, our granddaughter, or our nephew, or our niece, or our kid, or our sibling." "I hope-This is my prayer- that we find a way... to understand and integrate this enigma... into the best of our society, and the best of who we are," "and that it helps to bring out the best in us all." "That's my prayer." "Anyway, I'm grateful." "Thank you." "All right." "So what I want you to do is I want you to take the reins." "Take the reins, like that, in your hands and turn Betsy." "Say "Come on, Betsy." Can you say "Come on, Betsy"?" "Come on, Betsy." "And hold" " Lift your hand and push across like that." "Say "Come on, Betsy." That's right." "Turn her by yourself." "Say "Come on, Betsy." "Let's go to the barn. " Let's go to the barn." "All right." "Now turn Betsy this way, push your hand like this." "There you go." "There you go." "Yeah!" "Give her a little kick." "Yes." "And away she goes." "Excellent!" "You're riding." "Pull." "Give the reins a pull." "Yes!" "You just rode." "You just rode." "You just rode." "You just rode, you little- You just rode." "Thank you, Betsy." "I don't think I can even speak right now." "You push first." "Rush the poopie out." "Oh, good jobl" "Do you have another one in there?" "Flush, flush." " Flush." "Let's wash our hands." "I think it's very important that... we do learn to live with autism, in the sense that there's a lot of adjustments our society can make... to become more autism-friendly." "I really hope that as people learn more about autism, they will see autism as a form of diversity." "You know, I think we need to figure out a way to prevent some of the most severe forms of autism, but you certainly do not want to get rid of autism genetics, and I get asked, if I could snap my fingers, would I want to be not autistic?" "No, I wouldn't, because I like the clarity of thought that I have." "I think the thing that's so remarkable... is how much our lives have changed since coming back." "It's just" " It's night and day." "I can't even tell you- I can't even tell you how different it is." "What's your name?" "Rowan!" "How are you doing?" "I'm fine." "He's just charming." "He's a brilliant kid." "He is." "And his kind of quirky way of looking at all of this... is precisely what makes him so charming and interesting- Exactly." "And fun and funny." "And that I've got no interest in trying to change." "None at all." "No." "Quite the opposite, actually." "It's what makes him so wonderful." "No." "This is Curious George." "He lives in the zoo." "He was a good little monkey." "Ratty and Atalina are babysitting Rowan tonight." "And Rowan has said he's happy to have them do that." "And Rupert and I are going to go to a movie and have dinner." "You know, I'm really starting to taste freedom." "Freedom like we haven't had for the last six years." "And it's pretty nice." "Good-bye!" "Have a fun night!" "¶ When the gusts came around ¶" "¶ To blow me down ¶¶" "I think that the family influences... how a child views themselves." "So if the family comes to a place... where they can accept that their child has autism, and love the child, and develop a relationship, their life is going to be much better." "¶ Happy birthday to you ¶" "¶ Happy birthday, dear Rowan ¶" "¶ Happy birthday to you ¶¶" "Did Rowan get cured ofhis autism?" "No." "Rowan is still autistic." "Did Rowan get healed of the dysfunctions that went along with his autism- the physical and emotional incontinence, the inconsolable tantrums, the isolation from his peers?" "Yes." "For us, this healing was frankly miraculous." "But perhaps the real miracle... was that we went to Mongolia with a child suffering, and a family suffering, and we found healing through whatever means." "The bottom line is that we took the adventure, and through that adventure, we found a way, both as individuals, and as a family, to break free." "¶ Where the doors ¶" "¶ Are moaning all day long ¶" "¶ Where the stairs are leaning ¶" "¶ Dusk till dawn ¶" "¶ Where the windows ¶" "¶ Are breathing in the light ¶" "¶ Where the rooms are ¶" "¶ A collection of our lives ¶" "¶ This is a place ¶" "¶ Where I don't feel alone ¶" "¶ This is a place ¶" "¶ That I call my home ¶¶" "So, this is the New Trail Center, and we have founded... an equestrian and autism learning facility... in central Texas, near Elgin, Texas, where we live." "Good." "Now we're walking." "That's a walk." "The schoolhouse here is all set up... for teaching special needs." "We have a number of good qualified therapists now... coming in and working with us on the non-horse side." "As you can see, there's a lot of happy kids here now." "One." "Good." "And?" "One." "Two." "And?" "One." "One and two." "And what?" "And one." "Yeah!" "And two." " And one?" " One." "¶ Love is ¶" "¶ Letting ¶" "¶ Go ¶" "¶ How many times ¶" "¶ We've had to die ¶" "¶ Be broken down ¶" "¶ And yet rise ¶" "¶ And we fought ¶" "¶ And we've flown ¶" "¶ We have faltered ¶" "¶ And we've grown ¶" "¶ Are we ¶" "¶ Finding ¶" "¶ Love ¶" "¶ Does love mean ¶" "¶ Letting ¶" "¶ Go ¶" "¶ And I'll climb ¶" "¶ That mountain one day ¶" "¶ This is ¶" "¶ A moment ¶" "¶ Of grace ¶¶"