My 7-year-old brother Nate slept over at mine and my husband’s house last Friday. We took him to his first baseball game that night, where he ate a pretzel; caught a baseball; cuddled with the stuffed animal he had brought; asked questions constantly; ate a snow cone; and watched fireworks with a dropped jaw and a sparkle in his eyes like a 7-year-old should.

I have two brothers under the age of 10. The older of the two, JD, is 9 years old and has Classic Autism. The younger of the two, Nate, (the one about whom this post is written), does not have Autism, but lives with it on a daily basis nonetheless.

The night of the baseball game, we got home around 10:30 PM. Nate and my husband played video games for a while before Nate said he was tired and wanted to go to sleep. As I was…