Towson - Winter 2011

At home with the Schillings, clockwise from top left: Curt, Garrison, Shonda, Gehrig, Gabby and Grant

didn’t have time to grieve.” Encouraged to care for herself as diligently as she cared for others, she eventually found solace in a cancer support group. Then, concerned about lack of awareness about the dangers of skin cancer, the Schillings started the SHADE Foundation to educate people about the disease and sun safety.

By age 34, Shonda Schilling had added “cancer survivor” to her accomplishments, as well as a fourth child, Garrison. But her biggest test was to come in the form of the adorable but perplexingly difficult Grant, her third.

Even as a toddler, there had been signs that Grant was different from his siblings. He seemed unable to concentrate, and even minor change induced a meltdown. Most disheartening to the Schillings, he showed no interest in seeing his father—one of baseball’s great pitchers—on the mound. A trip to the ballpark was an invitation to mayhem, with Grant shrieking, crying and pleading to go home.

Still, Schilling says she wasn’t unduly
concerned at the time. “I noticed little
things, but I was just so completely
overwhelmed,” she says. When Grant
had outbursts in public, she cringed
and assumed onlookers thought the
worst. “People are so quick to judge,”
she says. “I was sure
they decided that Grant
was spoiled and that I
was a bad mother.”
In 2004 the Schillings
joined Red Sox Nation,
where Curt helped the
team to that season’s
World Series title. De-
spite a welcoming environment, Grant’s
behavior grew more problematic. He
didn’t observe ordinary social bound-
aries. He enjoyed frightening people.
He shoved and taunted other children.
Even worse, he spurned his mother’s

a failure,” Schilling
thought. “He won’t let
me love him, and he
won’t love me back.”
In 2007, when Grant
was 7, his teachers sug-
gested a neurological
screening for Attention
Deficit Hyperactivity
Disorder, or ADHD.
It seemed entirely
reasonable, given
that his father and
his older brother and
sister took medica-
tion for the condition.
Sure enough, the
neurologist diagnosed
ADHD, but there
was more: Grant had also tested at
the high-functioning end of the autism
spectrum. He had Asperger’s Syndrome,
a neurological disorder characterized
by incapacity for social interaction,
fixation on certain objects or subjects,
language abnormalities and atypical
responses to sensory inputs of all kinds.

For Shonda Schilling, shock and
dismay eventually turned to relief. She
realized that Grant hadn’t deliberately
been misbehaving all his life-—he just
hadn’t been able to process information
as others did. He was different, and
structure and routine her son
needed. She enrolled Grant in a special
day camp for kids with Asperger’s and
autism, where counselors integrated
lessons in social interaction and team-
work with hiking, swimming and other
fun activities.

“I USED TO THINK THAT MY KIDS’ PERFORMANCE IN SCHOOL
AND ON THE PLAYING FIELD WERE MY REPORT CARD. IF THEY
EXCELLED, I WAS A GOOD MOM. IF THEY DIDN’T, I HAD FAILED.”
—SHONDA SCHILLING