TMC PULSE

t m c » p u l s e | j u ly 2 0 1 7 26 A tiny genetic deletion makes roughly 30,000 Americans indiscriminately loving, trusting and outgoing. The disorder is called Williams syndrome, and it's sometimes labeled the opposite of autism because people who have it tend to be extreme extroverts. Journalist Jennifer Latson spent several years getting to know Eli, a boy with Williams syndrome, and his single mother, Gayle. Like many children with Williams, Eli has relatively well-developed verbal skills, despite an overall IQ around 50, and is obsessed with appliances, specifically the Tennant 5400 floor scrubber. Latson's new book, The Boy Who Loved Too Much, follows Eli into adolescence and outlines Gayle's struggle to protect her vulnerable child while also giving him the freedom to experience the world. ALL THE WAY HOME FROM CAMP, Eli fixated on the idea of becoming a teenager. The thrill of being part of a tribe, surrounded by his Williams peers, had left him aglow, and he was even chattier and more cheerful than usual on the trip back. He seemed to see the social inclusion of his week at camp not as an isolated experience but as a preview of his life to come. He sang improvised songs about his new friends, some of which were ballads devoted exclu- sively to Susie. Although Gayle prompted him a few times to sing the song about living in the now, he quickly reverted to his habit of asking endless questions, most of which now centered on the topic of turning thirteen. "When am I going to be thirteen, Mom?" he asked for the first time just after leaving the campground. She reminded him of his birthday: February 5. "And then I'm going to be a man?" he asked. "Well, maybe not immediately," she said. "Give it a little time." Once again, none of her answers seemed to satisfy his curiosity, either about when he'd be a teenager or about what life would be like once he was. Each answer prompted another question: "I'm going to get taller?" "I can use the Tennant 5400?" "I'm going to go on dates?" Since Gayle had some of the same questions herself, she was ill-equipped to answer. So the questions kept coming, from Michigan through Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York. Just across the Connecticut state line, the car came to a stop in a traffic jam on the Merritt Parkway. It seemed to intensify Eli's anxiety, as if the traffic were holding him back from his progress toward adolescence. "Mom, can I be a teenager? What time?" he asked with renewed urgency. "You'll be a teenager on February 5 at 5:38 p.m.," Gayle said. "And then what kind of school am I going to go to?" he asked. "Oh, you'll still go to the same school," she said. "You won't go to high school until you're fourteen." Eli nodded sagely, as if he'd already known this, but was just double-checking. He picked a brown crayon out of his crayon box, gripped it tightly in his fist, and swirled it across a page of his coloring book, obliterating the lines. "I can't wait to be a teenager," he said. Gayle looked back at him and smiled, thinking of the rosiness of his vision of adolescence. In his mind it meant boundless joy, visiting friends, scrubbing floors—all the activities he believed he'd been denied by virtue of being twelve and not thirteen. Her own vision was cloudier. So much of normal adolescence centered on the drive for independence, but she wasn't sure what role, if any, independence would play in Eli's teenage years. It was part of the frustration many teens with Williams endured: the impulse to pull away from their parents coupled with the immaturity and vulnerability that meant their parents couldn't responsibly let them go. They depended on their parents for so much more than the typical teenager did—particularly transportation, since few sixteen-year-olds with Williams, even among the highest- functioning, could learn to drive a car—and there was a good chance that their dependence would carry over into adulthood. Gayle thought of all the things she still did for Eli: bathe him, get him dressed, help him in the bathroom. He was unlikely to be able to perform these tasks on his own by February. Would she still be helping him with them in five years? Ten, even? When would he be a man, and what kind of man would he be? Excerpt from The Boy Who Loved Too Much: A True Story of Pathological Friendliness, by Jennifer Latson. Copyright © 2017 by Jennifer Latson. Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc, NY. Jennifer Latson has written for The Boston Globe, the Houston Chronicle, and time.com. The Boy Who Loved Too Much is her first book. Credit: Eric Kayne A True Story of Pathological Friendliness An excerpt from a new book by Houston journalist Jennifer Latson

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