House Rules by Jodi Picoult Page A

and remove toxins from the body.
    Isolation. A fixation on one particular subject. An inability to connect socially.
    Jacob was the one diagnosed, but I might as well have Asperger‘s, too.
    When I come downstairs at seven in the morning, Jacob is already sitting at the kitchen table, showered and dressed. An ordinary teenager would sleep in till noon on a Sunday Theo will, certainly but then again, Jacob isn‘t ordinary. His routine of getting up for school trumps the fact that it‘s a weekend and there‘s no urgency to leave the house.
    Even when it is a snow day and school is canceled, Jacob will get dressed instead of going back to bed.
    He is poring over the Sunday paper. Since when do you read the paper? I ask.
    What kind of mother doesn‘t want her son to be aware of current events?
    Yeah, I‘m not falling for that one. Let me guess you‘re clipping Staples coupons for Krazy Glue? Jacob goes through that stuff like water; it‘s part of the process used to get fingerprints off objects, and it‘s a common occurrence in this household for something to go missing my car keys, Theo‘s toothbrush and then to resurface beneath the overturned fish tank Jacob uses to fume for prints.
    I measure out enough coffee into the automatic drip to make me human and then get started on breakfast for Jacob. It‘s a challenge: he doesn‘t eat glutens and he doesn‘t eat caseins basically, that means no wheat, oat, rye, barley, or dairy. Since there‘s no cure yet for Asperger‘s, we treat the symptoms, and for some reason, if I regulate his diet his behavior improves. When he cheats, like he did at Christmas, I can see him slipping backward stimming or having meltdowns. Frankly, with 1 in 100 kids in the United States being diagnosed on the spectrum, I bet I could have a top-rated show on the Food Network: Alimentary Autism. Jacob doesn‘t share my culinary enthusiasm. He says that I‘m what you‘d get if you crossed Jenny Craig with Josef Mengele.
    Five days of the week, in addition to having a limited diet, Jacob eats by color. I don‘t really remember how this started, but it‘s a routine: all Monday food is green, all Tuesday food is red, all Wednesday food is yellow, and so on. For some reason this helped with his sense of structure. Weekends, though, are free-for-alls, so this morning my breakfast spread includes defrosted homemade tapioca rice muffins, and EnviroKidz Koala Crisp cereal with soy milk. I fry up some Applegate Farms turkey bacon and set out Skippy peanut butter and gluten-free bread. I have a three-inch binder full of food labels and toll-free numbers that is my chef‘s Bible. I also have grape juice, because Jacob mixes it with his liposome-enclosed glutathione one teaspoon, plus a quarter teaspoon of vitamin C powder. It still tastes like sulfur, but it‘s better than the previous alternative a cream he rubbed on his feet and covered with socks because it smelled so bad. The downside of the glutathione, though, pales in comparison to its upside: binding and removing toxins that Jacob‘s body can‘t do itself, and leaving him with better mental acuity.
    The food is only part of the buffet.
    I take out the tiny silicone bowls we use for Jacob‘s supplements. Every day he takes a multivitamin, a taurine capsule, and an omega-3 tablet. The taurine prevents meltdowns; the fatty acids help with mental flexibility. He lifts the newspaper up in front of his face as I set down the two treatments he hates the most: the oxytocin nasal spray and the B12 shot he injects himself, both of which help with anxiety.
    You can hide but you can‘t run, I say, tugging down the edge of the newspaper.
    You would think that the shot is the worst for him, but he actually lifts up his shirt and pinches his stomach to inject himself without much fanfare. However, for a kid who‘s got sensory issues, using a nasal spray is like waterboarding. Every day I watch Jacob stare down that bottle and finally convince himself he