Before I had an autistic son, my understanding of autism had come from my academic and clinical training.  If you asked me what autism was, I probably would have told you something like this: Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder, likely caused by a combination of genetic and environmental factors ….

By spring, my son Liam and I had established a pleasant routine of riding the e-bike to the library. Liam loved feeling the wind in his hair as we sped down the winding roads of Northwest Portland. At the library, he would carefully select his books and we'd head to checkout. One day, he grabbed a comic book from the adult section. My attempts to redirect him – first subtle, then bargaining, then bribing with ice cream – only made things worse.

Our bodies constantly gather sensory data from both our external and internal worlds. External senses include sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell. We sense our internal world through interoception - our internal sensing system. Interoception tells us 'how we feel': whether we're hungry, too hot, need to use the bathroom, or helps us understand our emotional state like the flutter of anxiety or the heaviness of sadness.

One morning, as we were preparing for our annual trip to the lake house, my son Liam dug in his heels at the last moment: "I am not going." His body tensed, his breathing grew shallow, and his eyes started darting - clear signs that his sympathetic nervous system was ramping up. We were on the verge of a meltdown, but I had no clue why.

We were staying at a resort in central Oregon, watching our older child fearlessly tackle the waterslide while our youngest splashed in the shallow end. Meanwhile, my middle son Liam stood at the pool's edge, fully armored in a lifejacket, sunglasses, sunhat, and a thick layer of mineral sunscreen. The water barely touched his ankles.