“He has Asperger’s, I don’t know if you know that,” Mr. Meloy said later in the woods. Hank’s parents seem to relish calling their son “weird,” as they both did several times throughout the interview, but their frankness about Hank’s Asperger’s syndrome doesn’t mean that they are not sometimes challenged by it.
“He’s so deeply in his own imaginary world, and sometimes it’s utterly frustrating to remove him from it,” Ms. Ellis said.
Mr. Meloy channeled his struggle to communicate with his son into a track from “The King Is Dead”:
“Hey Henry, can you hear me?
Let me see those eyes
This distance between us
Can seem of mountain size.”
“It’s funny because one of the hallmarks of Asperger’s or autism is an inability to kind of imagine or do creative, imaginative play,” Mr. Meloy said. “But Hank has developed into this person who could turn anything into imaginative play. He doesn’t fit that description at all. In fact, I’ve seen him using a blanket as a mountain and just his hands as dragons. I feel like he’s the only kid we could’ve created together.”
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(Source: socialist-cokehead)
