The Power of Love
When actress Holly Robinson Peete learned her son had been diagnosed with autism, she was sure her whole world had fallen apart. Then she picked herself up and fought back.

“We call it the world’s worst day—like someone had just dropped us off in the middle of a foreign country where we couldn’t speak the language and we couldn’t communicate. So little was known just a decade ago: There was no Welcome to Autism book; there was no map.”

In fact, it was 2000 when actress Holly Robinson Peete and her husband, famed quarterback Rodney Peete, learned that their son R.J. had autism. He was nearly three at the time—a sliver of the young man he is today—and his diagnosis felt like a “punch in the gut,” she says. “We sat there stone-faced as a lady read us a laundry list of things that R.J. would never do. She told us he would never play a sport, never engage in impromptu conversation, never say ‘I love you,’ never show affection, never make eye contact, never understand when he’s in danger. My husband and I were just devastated, and in shock and denial for a period of time. Where are we supposed to go?, we wondered. Where is the hope? There was none.”

They were standing at the intersection of Anger Boulevard and Pissed-Off Avenue, Holly recounts, and it was there that they remained—blindsided and seemingly stuck—for a while. She admits that R.J.’s diagnosis and the struggles they faced took a toll on their lives as a family and stressed her marriage to Rodney. “Now, I know exactly why that is,” she says. “You have a child who can’t express himself. It can be difficult to wrangle his behavior. And the outside world doesn’t understand.”

It was that lack of understanding that prompted Holly and Rodney to go public with their story—a decision that Holly arrived at first, and that neither arrived at lightly. “Rodney didn’t want to drag R.J. out as the autism poster boy,” Holly says, “but nobody was talking about autism and we knew we had to come out and talk publicly.”

She was used to the spotlight of course, growing up as the daughter of Matt Robinson (the original Gordon on Sesame Street) and blossoming into a star in her own right, starring on 21 Jump Street and Hangin’ With Mr. Cooper in her twenties and thirties. She has hosted a satellite-radio show and most recently has been seen battling in Donald Trump’s boardroom on Celebrity Apprentice. But it is in her role as a mother and autism activist (she is on the board of Autism Speaks, the nation’s largest autism science and advocacy organization) that has found herself under the brightest spotlight.

Today, she encourages parents of newly diagnosed children to go through their full range of emotions. “Take the time to be upset,” she recommends. “Go to that place of ‘Why me? Why my kid?’ Give yourself a chance to feel sorry for yourself—you’re allowed to do that. And then you have to snap out if it. If you’re lucky to get an early diagnosis, you have a lot of opportunities to help your child. Go over the top to figure out what you can do. Be a detective. If you find something and find it early, there is a better opportunity to find results.”

She practiced what she preaches to others. “I knew I had a short window of time while R.J. was developing,” she says. “I knew that the earlier I intervened, the better shot I had of bringing him out of autism. So I started to put the puzzle together. We immersed him in everything we could. We got him tested for allergies and checked his gastrointestinal health, and learned he had a parasite and a gluten allergy. Instead of just following a prescription for behavioral medicine, we decided to treat the whole child.” They cobbled together pieces of one therapy and parts of another to arrive at a program that best suited R.J.’s needs—and they began to see results.

Indeed, R.J. has notched milestones that experts said he never would achieve, like saying “I love you” and engaging in spontaneous conversation. “When we see our son having a fight with his younger brother, we’re thrilled because it’s a typical moment,” Holly says with a laugh. R.J. has interests and is engaged in his surroundings. He is doing well in school and—with some help from Holly and Rodney and his twin sister, Ryan—R.J. even has a group of neurotypical friends who have embraced him. A few years ago Ryan, always the concerned and protective sister, pointed out to her parents the social difficulties R.J. was encountering at school. “She said we had to come to school and talk to the other kids,” Holly remembers. “It was Autism 101 for fourth-graders, and it was like sitting in front of a firing squad. We asked them, ‘What are you really great at? What are you bad at?’ We told them that R.J. could tell them the name of every professional baseball player, every professional football player, every president. We told them that there are all these cool things he can do—but he has a hard time making friends.

“Their faces dropped,” she says, remembering that day. “It was like a cloud had been lifted. But the play dates started, and he became part of the pack he couldn’t break into.”

Still, Holly knows the road ahead is long. “Autism re-presents itself as a child grows,” she explains. “R.J. is 12 now and the hormones are palpable. Puberty for kids with autism is much harder than it is for other children—the hormones are combined with autism’s social miscues and the inability to read situations. So we’re going through the next phase. This is where you start asking, ‘Will he ever live on his own? Will he ever get a driver’s license, a job? Will he have meaningful relationships with females? Will he graduate from high school?’

“There are a lot of uncertainties,” she continues. “The future is a little bit daunting. It’s a tiring, never-ending journey. But hopefully we—and every family coping with autism—can all go through it with people who understand, with spouses that support us, with communities that love their children, and with friends.

When Holly Robinson Peete’s daughter, Ryan, was in second grade, she wrote an essay called “The Invisible Twin.” It was the story of a young girl much like herself who had a twin brother—much like her own—who didn’t play with her. “It was heartbreaking,” Holly remembers, “but Ryan said she wasn’t sad—she was just being honest.” The story, told with the earnest tone of a young child, made its way from one e-mail address to another before it landed in the inbox of someone at Scholastic.

No mainstream big publisher had a children’s book about autism at the time, and Holly was approached with an offer to turn Ryan’s essay into something more. From that conversation was born My Brother Charlie, a fictional children’s book based on the Peete family’s own experiences with autism. As the reader encounters Charlie’s abilities to swim, play piano, and connect with the family dog, the other things that set Charlie apart become less important. The book brims with lessons of patience and acceptance, and is a heartwarming glimpse at a sister’s unconditional love for her brother.

My Brother Charlie, written by Holly Robinson Peete and Ryan Elizabeth Peete and illustrated by Shane W. Evans, is on sale now. A portion of proceeds from the book will be donated to the hollyrod4kids Foundation to help children with autism gain access to affordable treatments and therapies.