Missing CrimeBusters, which is on the USA Network at 4:30 every day, thanks to the wonders of syndication. Even though I know all 114 of the episodes by heart, watching them daily is as important to me as taking insulin would be to a diabetic. My whole day is planned around it, and if I can’t have my fix, I get shaky. p.20) There are 12 things listed that Jacob can’t stand. Do you see his logic? We all have things we could put into such a list. What would yours be? Real mothers wonder why experts who write for Parents and Good Housekeeping-and, dare I say it, the Burlington Free Press-seem to have their acts together all the time when they themselves can barely keep their heads above the stormy seas of parenthood.

I take one last, longing look at the beer I didn’t drink and spill it down the sink. Then I grab Sasha’s coat from the front hallway and rummage through the mudroom for her boots. They’re not there; they’re not on the floor of her bedroom either. I sit down on the edge of her bed and gently shake her out of sleep. “Hey, baby,” I whisper. “Daddy’s got to go to work.” Rest easy, real mothers. The very fact that you worry about being a good mom means that you already are one.” As the mother of a child with Asperger's Syndrome, I can tell you that many of these people have very little sense of time. The time that he spent in a jail cell, even if it was only a day or two, would seem like a lifetime to him. I wonder if they would give him time served, plus probation or something? Note: It was really a ten, but that’s an even number and saying it out loud would make my anxiety level blow off the chart.) As David became a teenager, his tantrums were harder to control. He was six feet tall and 200 pounds, but profoundly autistic – and the smallest things would set him off in frustration, since he couldn’t tell us what he wanted or needed. I remember once when my aunt had to literally sit on David to get him to stop having a meltdown in a store – and the police were called, because to someone who didn’t know better, it looked a lot like child abuse. When David turned 21, he moved into a group home with other autistic young adults. During a meltdown, he put his hand through a window – and the caretaker who owned the home called the police to restrain him. Although charges were not pressed, it got me wondering – how would someone autistic be perceived by the law enforcement community? Is a fair trial possible, when you can’t communicate well with the rest of the world?

Theo rolls his eyes. “Jeez, why can’t you be like other mothers and just ask me if I’m smoking weed?”

No, he’s just a kid – not a kid with Asperger’s. I can tell, just by looking into the windows at night and watching the family. I know, because that kitchen with its warm yellow walls is a place I want to be, not somewhere I’d run away from. I walk to the road and skate away from the gingerbread house. Underneath my coat is the Wii game I grabbed at the last minute – some Super Mario challenge. I can feel my heart pounding against it. I don’t get into trouble because rules are what keep me sane. Rules mean that the day is going to go exactly the way I am predicting it to be. I do what I’m told; I just wish everyone else would do it too. p. 146) Jacob says being on the other side of dead isn’t that different from having Asperger’s. What do you think he means by that?

What others are saying about House Rules

And off goes my mother, champion of the confused, doyenne of the dense. Saving the world one letter at a time. I wonder what all those devoted readers would think if they knew that the real Auntie Em had one son who was practically a sociopath and another one who was socially impractical. I follow them into the woods, careful to stay in the shadows. There are searchlights illuminating the area around the body, so that the evidence can be fully recorded. I have spent much of my eighteen years learning how to exist in a world that is occasionally orange, chaotic, and too loud. In between classes, for example, I wear headphones. I used to wear this great pair that made me look like an air traffic controller but Theo said everyone made fun of me when they saw me in the halls, so my mother convinced me to use ear buds instead. I hardly ever go to the cafeteria, because a) there’s no one for me to sit with and b) all those conversations crossing each other feels like knives on my skin. Instead, I hang out in the teacher’s room, where if I happen to mention that Pythagoras did not really discover the Pythagorean Theorem (the Egyptians used it hundreds of years before Pythagoras was even a seductive gleam in his Grecian parents’ eyes), they do not look at me as if I have grown a second head. If things get really bad, pressure helps – like lying under a weighted blanket or a pile of laundry. One of my therapists, a Skinner aficionado, got me to relax to Bob Marley songs. When I get upset, I repeat words over and over and talk in a flat voice. I close my eyes and ask myself, What Would Dr. Henry Lee Do? Everyone - talk to Jacob!" He always tells the truth, so ask him very slowly, step by step, what happened."

I am supposed to make exceptions for Jacob; it’s one of our unwritten house rules. So when we need to take a detour away from a detour sign (how ironic is that?) since it’s orange and freaks Jacob out, that trumps the fact that I’m ten minutes late for school. Or the fact that he always gets the shower first, because a hundred billion years ago when I was still a baby Jacob took the first shower, and he can’t handle having his routine messed up.

Jodi Picoult

Theo Hunt – The 15-year-old younger brother of Jacob, who claims to be independent and rebellious. [2] JP: It doesn’t really matter whether it’s Asperger’s or a rape victim or a cancer patient – when research subjects open up to me with such honesty I ALWAYS feel a responsibility to “get it right.” House Rules is narrated by five characters: Emma, Jacob and Theo Hunt, lawyer Oliver Bond, and Detective Rich Matson. How do each of these characters bring a different perspective to the novel? How would the reading experience have been different if one of the narrators’ perspectives was removed from the novel?

That’s what I do this afternoon, after my brother decides to cast me as the perp in his fake crime scene. I’ll be honest with you – it wasn’t the fact that he took my sneakers without asking or even that he stole hair out of my brush (which is, frankly, Silence-of-the-Lambs creepy). It was that when I saw Jacob in the kitchen with his corn-syrup blood and his fake head injury and all the evidence pointing to me, for a half a second, I thought: I wish. So lets move past the possible legal actions taken towards the brothers and the formulatic plot. This book has taught me alot and brought me through a roller coaster of emotions especially through Jacob's eyes. I hope I've focused on the things Ms. Picoult did RIGHT, because this is a worthy book on a timely subject, and I really liked the characters. There were places where I was laughing and crying for them at the same time.Emma mentions that she had to fight for Jacob’s Individualized Education Program (IEP), just like she and Oliver had to fight for Jacob’s accommodations in the courtroom. Research the availability of IEPs in your state. What is the process for obtaining one? Several people have criticised the ending of the book, but i beg to differ. This was never a real murder story to start with so let's not expect great revelations or realising obvious clues we missed out at the end as would a typical detective story. This excellent work of Jodi's is a book of emotional and mental turmoil. The entire story really is built upon one House Rule: Take care of your brother, for he's all that you got. Oliver makes a request for accommodations for Jacob in court. Do they seem fair? The first 5 minutes of the trial show the constant vigilance needed to keep Jacob from having a meltdown and how much Emma does know about her son. Discuss. I think the hardest thing about having Asperger’s, though, is that there are times these kids look completely normal. And then at other times, it is blatantly clear that something’s a little different. The parents of AS kids I met with worried about this, and how – in their absence – their children would be able to communicate to others. One mother told me that she’d read AS kids should carry a card in their wallets, stating that they have autism. That way if a police officer approached, the card could be handed over. But this mother also asked, if her son reached for his wallet, would the policeman wait patiently – or assume he was going for a gun, and shoot first?