Autism Speaks

The world of autism and its diagnosis has changed dramatically since Connor was a child. As Dena said, "it was just at the tail end of the whole 'refrigerator mommy' theory, which is that autism was caused by moms not giving their kids enough love, which is, you know, ludicrous... It was confusing for us because we thought autism was one certain thing where now we see it's a spectrum." And Connor didn't really have any behavioral problems, nor was he completely closed off. He was language delayed and "didn't have really any conversational language at all until he was almost seven." The language that he did have is what is known as echolalia; children will simply echo back whatever is said to them. Connor had been in speech therapy for a year when his therapist suggested Dena and her husband take him to a psychologist. Within a few hour-long sessions, the psychologist, Dr. B.J. Freeman, came back with a diagnosis.

Dena, Connor and Mark

"I remember the walk through the parking lot from the doctor's office to our car at UCLA," Dena told us. "It was the longest walk I've ever made in my life. My husband and I didn't talk and we had Connor between us. We didn't say anything for a long time." At the time, there was much less information about autism, about what it looked like, about how to treat it. Connor had started with speech therapy, he also had occupational therapy, biofeedback – as Dena said, if it wasn't too "bizarre and weird," they tried it. And their psychologist, Dr. Freeman, had some words of wisdom for them. "She said, I can see you want me to give you guarantees. You want me to promise you that he'll go to school, that he'll drive a car, that he'll get married. I can't guarantee you any of that... Kids don't come with guarantees. That helped us keep perspective."

The Carvers

Another thing that helped was action and advocacy. "We started a preschool because there was no preschool that we liked for him. He could've stayed in regular preschool but it wasn't serving his needs at the time. As we started advocating and took steps for him, then we started feeling better. Not that we had more control because we knew we didn't have control. We were doing something." And they also came to accept Connor for who he was, and is. "We stopped labeling and we stopped looking for normality and we stopped looking for false ideas of what a kid should look like and started looking more realistically at Connor and saying, what is he capable of? That's all you want for your child, is for them to reach whatever full potential they have, which is always bigger and grander than you realize at first. For any kid."

Of course, that doesn't mean it's been easy. They had to work to get Connor to be more active. In high school, he played football and ran track, but, Dena tells us, "if something's not set apart for him and he's given a purpose for it, then just to do something to do it is not going to happen." Still, the hardest part as a mother was feeling a lack of connection to her first-born. Connor was about two and a half and Dena had taken him to the park, where she "saw another boy his age chatting with his mother and telling her stuff. And I was lonely. Connor and I had a wonderful relationship, but not in that way. I didn't know what he was thinking. I didn't know what he was a feeling. We were together but not together. And I think it's the being together but not together thing that's the biggest heartbreak for moms. You want connection with your child. And if they don't connect with you, it's heartbreaking. I think it's the sense of loneliness and lack of connection that's the hardest thing for a mom."

Dena's brood - Helio, Jensen, Connor and Adelle

So why this story with Lexie, Abe and Theo, and why now? "I would hope that we would make the world understand and have a little compassion and sympathy for the parents and the kids who are going through this," Dena told us. Also, she's hoping it will help educate other kids, who are going to see autistic students in their classrooms, at their Little League games, everywhere. Dena believes that "this generation has the potential to be amazingly compassionate, wonderful, wise, if they embrace the kids with autism who are in their lives."

And that's part of what she told Connor to get him to embrace this storyline. "A couple of nights ago we sat down and we talked a lot about it, about how he needs to know that this is a word that is going to run in-and-out of the fabric of his life, forever. And what does that mean and what does that look like and does it really change anything. You sort of are who you are no matter what label gets put on you. When I started talking about his ability to be inspirational and to serve up his life and let people look at it and get hope from that, then all of a sudden it became purposeful for him and he was really cool about it. As long as there was a really good reason!"

Lexie and Abe. Is there trouble ahead for this couple?

However, if you know him, don't expect to see a direct representation of Connor there in Salem. "Every child with autism is so unique," Dena told us. "Theo has become a person to me, with his own set of circumstances and situations and personality traits. The more I write Theo, the more I think that's going to be defined in my head. This little actor is so wonderful that as I watch the performances that will feed me." There may be more similarities between Dena and her husband Mark's relationship and that of Lexie and Abe. "Some of the conversations that Abe and Lexie have, I must've stored away somewhere in my brain," Dena said. "It's been a long time since my husband and I dealt with the grief end of this and yet when I conjured it up it was right there. Right there, just below the surface. One of my scriptwriters even called up and said, this is too intimate. This is such intimate, raw emotion between Abe and Lexie that it's uncomfortable for me to write. Yeah, well, that's it. That's a good thing. So that's where I think it's most like my story. Putting myself in Lexie's shoes and putting Lexie in my shoes and all the other women that I've spoken to who've dealt with this. There've been so many. They're great women and I'm proud to be among them."

"When you're a parent," Dena told us, "you're swimming in the ocean. If your child has a disability, you're brought down below the surface. At first you feel like you're drowning, then you start looking around and it's kind of pretty down there. There's coral and they're fish – not to metaphor it to death. That analogy has helped me a lot of times."

This storyline is shaping up to be a very good thing and we can't wait to see more of Abe, Lexie and Theo as their story evolves and they learn how to breathe under water.

For more information, go to Autism Speaks.