Devoted but Dateless - NYTimes.com A CLOSE friend keeps saying: "Just lie about it on the first few dates. It'll be all right. She means lie about age. Not mine, though - my son's. Danny, my older child, is 16; we were told he was autistic when he was 3. His father and I were divorced several years ago. I can go out only when my ex-husband is with the children, or when I can find a baby sitter, which means there is no room for spontaneity, for that moment when you're chatting online and one of you says, "Let's meet for coffee now." This is all pretty standard for any single mother, except that normally teenagers can be left on their own, at least for an hour. Danny's 12-year-old brother, Rafi, is happy to play video games without me around to tell him to do his homework. Still, I won't leave Rafi in charge of his brother, because he can't manage Danny when Danny is anxious or having a tantrum, which happens often, especially if I'm not there to calm him. So where does the lie come into it? Well, the first date is always a bit of a job interview, and among the first questions you expect when you're a parent is, "How old are your kids?" My problem is if I admit early on that I have a teenager who needs a baby sitter, I more or less have to explain that my son is autistic. Hence, my friend's advice: pretend I have a much younger child, and nobody will think it's weird that I can't leave a toddler alone. Few men are thrilled by the idea of dating a woman with children, and a child with a disability, particularly one that can be as demanding as autism, is not exactly an aphrodisiac. I learned this the hard way when I started dating after my husband left. At first I hoped someone would fix me up, but no one did. None of my friends with autistic children ever get set up either, even the blond, skinny, gorgeous ones. So online dating becomes the only option, since most of us rarely see any adults but the therapists, generally female, who work with our children. I hesitated, nervous about entering the world of Internet romance. But my friend said: "You don't have to find the love of your life. Just get out of the house. So I went online. I didn't intend to introduce my children to anyone I dated unless the relationship became serious. I didn't realize, though, that just mentioning that I had an autistic child would be so problematic. After I said the A-word the first few times, the faces of my dates invariably took on one of two expressions: deep sympathy or deep horror, coupled, in either case, with an obvious end to any romantic interest. I shouldn't have been surprised. As my friend likes to put it, "If their own fathers walked out, why would any other man want to walk in?" The second autism came up, the tone of the date shifted from fun and intrigue to a mini-symposium on the subject, with my date in the audience and me on the podium, not exactly conducive to romance. When was Danny's autism first diagnosed? What kind of treatments have I tried with him? What is his prognosis? Will he ever be able to live independently? These questions aren't easy for me to discuss with someone I've just met, and I don't know all the answers myself. Once the symposium was over, so was the date, along with any chances for a second one. The polite guys said it was nice to meet me and wished me luck. Obviously there may be many reasons a man doesn't want a second date, and autism is just one. But my friends with autistic children all have had similar experiences (sometimes even with the same men - we compare notes). The dates would end before we'd even get the chance to know each other. So why not tell a little white lie about Danny's age (just subtract a decade)? And if things seem to be progressing and I think the guy can handle it, then I could tell him Danny's real age after we've been going out for a couple of months. Hannah Brown lives in Jerusalem, where she is the film critic for The Jerusalem Post. Her novel, "If I Could Tell You," about raising autistic children, was recently published by Vantage Point Books.