From a purely human standpoint, my daughter's development has brought me no satisfaction. (Perhaps I'm being unfair; it's true she learned to walk and feed herself fairly quickly.) When she was a month old, I noticed she wasn't smiling, wasn't observing anything, had no interest in anything except elongated objects. Today she's thirty-nine, and she has never embraced me. I think she recognizes me, but she behaves as if she doesn't know me. Our daily life has been disappointing: there has never been any sign of feeling on her part. People suggested water play. For her, it meant swallowing water endlessly and then letting it run out from underneath.
From the time she was very small, every evening at bedtime we say the night prayer together. I pray with all my heart. M.A. is profoundly autistic: she speaks by "stringing pearls"—uttering words without logic—except that occasionally she says what I call "a punch to the gut," and it fits the moment perfectly. For two or three years now, these phrases of hers—these punches to the gut—have multiplied, and she has begun to participate in our prayer by adding something of her own that corresponds exactly to what is happening. So when I tell her I want to pray for her older brother, she speaks the names of her three grandchildren, even though she barely knows them. One day, when I had finished listing all my intentions, she added: "...and for the whole world." Sometimes she takes the initiative herself, saying: "Lord, I cry out to you."
What is quite extraordinary is that this prayer time began in the evening and only with me, and now it has extended to other places and other settings. It has happened twice: a Jewish person and a Protestant told me that at the Center she usually attends, M.A. had given them the gift of praying together with them. This event, which means a great deal to me, gave me the courage to ask for a discussion on this subject. The result was that at a meeting of educators and parents, all the parents embraced my conviction that our children have a transcendent dimension. And the conversation isn't closed! It is a great consolation to us that our daughter—now grown into adulthood—and our evening prayer have been the beginning of an encounter with God's presence in our young people.
- D.M. Ribadeau-Dumas, 1994 - O. et L; n° 99