Finding humor in challenging life
Sunday, May 04, 2008 (22:59:32)

Posted by lightfoot

BY RUMMANA HUSSAIN

BUCKTOWN | 1-woman show views her success raising autistic boys

She walks into the room, staring at the strangers. Sometimes, the tears slide down her cheeks when she conjures up the painful details of her past.

They are tears of a successful single mother of eight. They are tears of a fighter. They are tears of gratitude.

"I want to live a joyful life," said 50-year-old Lynette Louise, who has transformed her unorthodox life's ups and downs into a three-hour, one-woman "reality" show that hovers between the comedic and informative. "And since I want to live a joyful life, I look at everything and try to find humor in it."

Louise's act, hitting Bucktown's Gorilla Tango Theatre on Tuesday night (31/3/08), covers the nitty gritty involved in raising a large brood, including four adopted autistic boys and two runaway girls she couldn't stand to see get bounced from home to home. With the aplomb of a "Lily Tomlin doing 'The Vagina Monologues,'" the Calgary native relays the stories of packing up the family in an RV for "travel therapy" and forming a musical troupe that performed in prisons. But the gist of her show is educational as she interweaves the challenges she faced raising special-needs children into independent adults. One of her goals, Louise said, is to bust the myth that autistic children cannot function normally.

"I talk about it all," said Louise, founder of the Santa Monica-based Brain and Body Clinic, a treatment center for those with autism and other brain disorders.

When asked how a woman, admittedly from a troubled background and with so much emotional baggage, could take on so much responsibility, Louise said, "When people have a problem, they are usually attracted to others with problems. They are looking for answers"

Louise admits she "dropped the ball a lot," but she wants parents with children with disabilities to understand that if they make a mistake, they can fix it.

Save for one, all of Louise's adult children, now in their 20s and 30s, live on their own across Canada and the United States. Among her autistic boys, there is a helicopter mechanic with the National Guard, a pipeliner and a handyman.

Sound too good to be true?

Not according to Dr. Alan I. Rosenblatt, a specialist in neurodevelopmental pediatric care and an autism expert. The North Side doctor said that although the severity of the condition varies, the possibility of rearing an autistic child into a functional adult is highly possible.

Rosenblatt said he had never heard of Louise but credited her courageousness and chutzpa.

A parent with an autistic child "has to have a sense of humor" to succeed, he said.

Louise, also a grandmother of eight, couldn't agree more: "You have to be creative, You have to be different. . . . I'm pretty happy. I love how it's all turned out."

Chicago Sun-Times