"Binkie!" he barks.

"Alex," I reply, "you're miles right now from binkie-dom, pal!"

His binkies ("pacifiers," as I once knew them) sit in a nut can on the shelf of the boys' room. Or maybe a cocoa can -- I can't tell, as somebody ripped the label off weeks ago. Maybe me, out of anger in the middle of the night that my nearly-seven-year-old can't go back to sleep without a binkie, and anger that through the evening he had scattered them around the house as if laying out a scavenger hunt.

Alex has four binkies. (Ned, incidentally, shoves one in his mouth when he sees Alex with one, and when he thinks it will bother me. Ned looks ridiculous with a binkie. There, I said it, and I don't think that one day he'll hate me for saying it.) Alex has two "old binkies," one green and one yellow, and two "new," yellow and blue. The shields on the new binkies -- I guess you call them shields; I really didn't think I'd have to be thinking about binkies at my age -- have holes in them, like masks for tiny hockey goalies. Alex won't have anything to do with the new binkies. But after especially trying schooldays, Alex will by 7:30 fly into the living room from his bedroom, a binkie in his face and fondling a soft piece of cloth, reminding me of Churchill conducting a last bit of war business before bed in a robe and with a cigar. Alex is tactile, and is another term I remember from deep in doctor days: "Orally centered."

Sometimes when we're settling the boys for bed on the other side of 8:30, Alex gnaws on his binkie, snapping it like gum. "Alex, stop chewing or no binkie. Stop chewing or no binkie. No, you sit here and read with me. Ned, take that out of your mouth. You look silly, Ned. I'm sorry, but there, I said it ..."

"Binkie!" says Alex. "Go to bed! Binkie!"

I recently told someone that there are 30-year-old autistic kids who still use binkies. "That's because their parents let them!" she replied.

We do. I do anyway, because life with Alex is a list of things to teach him, a series of fronts: advancing on some, holding ground on others. He is solidly into his schooling, for instance, at least for now and apparently for the next year or two. Alex's teacher takes her class on as many as a half-dozen field trips a month, which has greatly helped him learn how to hold a hand and walk semi-civilized down the sidewalk. He attends a rec program on Saturdays and on school breaks. He often sits quietly in restaurants now (especially Burger King), and I'd sure rather fly cross-country with Alex than with Ned. Alex has learned how to ride on a school bus.

For dinner now, we can offer Alex chicken nuggets or a hot dog (no bun); though dessert will likely be a chocolate protein bar, it could also be vanilla ice cream or yogurt. He likes to zip up all jackets now, including Ned's. He can slip on his own socks and shoes. He's intensely curious about buttons and belts. When I have the boys for an outing, we climb rocks in Central Park. We haven't needed a playground in months, and a stroller in many months more than that. On a Cape Cod trail in early September, we discovered that Alex may dart ahead, but he will stop if told, "Alex, wait for Ned/mommy/daddy!"

Jill has toilet training on the list for this Christmas break. I think we have a 50/50 chance of succeeding.

On no front are we losing ground. I'm not happy Alex still needs a binkie, any more than I'm happy he still needs a diaper, or that already I've had a hundred, a thousand times the number of conversations with Ned that I've had, or will likely have anytime soon, with Alex.

"Go to bed! Binkie!"

Enjoy that cigar while you can, Sir Winston. Binkies are on the list, and a long time before you're 30.