This evening I watched my friend's severely autistic son for a few hours. After my own kid finished his homework, I got out my extremely mellow 14 mo bp. He was very excited to see her again, wanted "snake kisses" like my son gets when she sniffs his nose and was thrilled to have her in his lap and on his shoulders. He's very gentle with animals, but just can't quite remember that he shouldn't reach for her head. Millie put up with all of it with extremely good grace and didn't even pull her head away when he forgot and tried to pet her head. (I intercepted. This was all very closely supervised and with his mom's permission.)
He announced several times that "Millie loves me!" I won't put up a picture of someone else's child, so you'll just have to imagine the huge grin on his face.
Even if snakes can't bond with humans, we sure can bond with them.
(Btw, I tried, but have given up on stopping my son from doing "snake kisses", and just make sure he knows not to stick his face at any other animal.)
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