How I connected with my autistic son through video games

A PlayStation game opened up a liberating world of play, interaction and co-operation for Keith Stuart and his young son. It continues to be a cornerstone of their relationship - and a place to have fun together as equals

My son was seven when a paediatrician diagnosed him on the autism scale - but really, we had known for years. There was his limited vocabulary - a handful of words by the time he was three, and a habit of mixing up letters or relying on stock sentences. He found it hard to get on with other children at his nursery, and later, when he went to a much bigger school, it was obvious the experience was terrifyingly loud, hectic and incomprehensible to him. Meanwhile, if there was something he was interested in, whether it was Peppa Pig or Superman, he would fixate on it to the detriment of absolutely anything else. We knew where all the signs were pointing.

When you get this diagnosis, there are a lot of things you worry about: what will happen to their education; will they make friends; how independent will they be when they grow up? But a key element beneath all that is a basic human need: self-expression. Often Zac would try to tell us about things he liked, or stuff he had done at school, but his vocabulary would let him down, and he would get impatient. We tried to help, guessing what he wanted to tell us, but this frustrated him even more. It was heartbreaking. But, one day, when he was three or four, I was playing video games and I loaded up a PlayStation title called LittleBigPlanet; it's a kind of platform leaping game, like Super Mario Bros, and the hero is this cute little doll called Sackboy. PlayStation 3 has motion detectors in its controller, so when you tilt it in your hands, Sackboy nods his head in time. I let Zac play and he was amazed and delighted; when Sackboy responded to his commands, he fell about laughing. It was an instant connection.