Impressed with B.'s improvement, both families hired A.B.A. specialists from the University of California, Los Angeles (where A.B.A. was developed), for three days of training. The cost was enormous, between $10,000 and $15,000, covering not only the specialists’ fees but also their airfare and hotel stays. The specialists spent hours watching each boy, identifying his idiosyncrasies and creating a detailed set of responses for his parents to use. The trainers returned every couple of months to work on a new phase, seeking to teach the boys not just how to use language but also how to modulate their voices, how to engage in imaginative play, how to gesture and interpret the gestures of others. The families also recruited and trained people to provide A.B.A. to their sons, so each boy received 35 hours a week of one-on-one therapy.

The specialists taught the parents that if their child wanted something, they should hand it to him — but should not let go until he looked at them. Within a month, B. was looking at people when he asked them for something, having learned it was the only way to get what he wanted. Within four months, he was looking at people even when he wasn’t soliciting help. Soon he learned to point to things he desired, a skill that required weeks of lessons. Once B. understood the power of pointing, he no longer pulled his mother to the refrigerator and howled till she happened upon the food he wanted; now he could point to grapes and get grapes. “Between the time he was age 1 and almost 3,” L. said, “I remember only darkness, only fear. But as soon as I figured out how to teach him, the darkness lifted. It was thrilling. I couldn’t wait to get up each morning and teach him something new. It wasn’t work at all. It was a huge, huge relief.” Soon B. began to use language to communicate, albeit inventively at first. One time when B. pointed to the grapes in the fridge, L. took them out, plucked them off the stem and handed them to him — at which point he started screaming. He threw himself on the ground, flailing in misery. L. was baffled. He had clearly pointed to the grapes. What had she misunderstood? Why were his tantrums so frustratingly arbitrary?

Suddenly, B. pleaded: “Tree! Tree!” It hit her: He wanted the grapes still attached to the stem. He wanted to pull them off himself! “It was like, Oh, my god, how many times have I thought his tantrums were random, when they weren’t random at all? I felt so bad for him: What other things have you wanted that you couldn’t tell me?”

After that, B.'s language blossomed quickly. By the time he finished kindergarten, he was chatty and amiable, though he remained socially awkward, hyperactive and unyieldingly obsessed with the animal kingdom — he knew every kind of dinosaur, every kind of fish. Whatever his preoccupation of the moment, he would talk about it incessantly to anyone who would, or wouldn’t, listen. L. made three small laminated coupons, and each morning, she’d tuck them into B.'s front pocket and remind him that whenever he talked about his favorite animal or noticed kids walking away or changing the subject, he should move a coupon to his other pocket. Once he ran out of coupons, she told him, he had to find other things to talk about for the rest of the day. Whether because of the coupons or maturation or something else, B.'s monologues stopped by second grade. Around the same time, his fixations eased. B.'s doctor concluded that the last vestiges of his autism were gone; he no longer met the criteria, even in its mildest form.

L. was ecstatic, but she was also plagued by guilt. Though Jackie’s son received the same treatments as B., he had made no such progress. Matthew still could not talk. He remained uninterested in other children and most toys. And despite efforts to teach him, Matthew’s communication remained extremely limited: When he squealed loudly, he was happy. When he threw up — which for a year he did daily — his parents concluded that he was distressed, after a doctor assured them that there wasn’t anything physically wrong with him.