"When I grow up I want to be a screwdriver!" A small boy spins down the sidewalk as his mother follows him with her eyes and heart. Nicky has autism. Winner of the ASA Outstanding Literary Work of the Year Award, Just This Side of Normal is a powerful story of a parent's search for understanding in a world that sometimes makes no sense. This book was one of the first autobiographies written by a parent of a child with autism and it continues to inspire both parents and professionals in the autism community.
This is a potty training book for children with special needs, primarily autism. This book includes vibrant animations, has a captivating while relatable story, and offers effective research-based educational strategies such as the "I Do, You Do, We Do" teaching model and Picture Exchange Communication Systems (PECS), which was designed to help children effectively and efficiently communicate with others. The book also offers thinking questions, facts, and more. This book was written as a labor of love by autism and special education specialist, Dr. Christina Delgado, EdD.
“Ah Jeeeze, not another book about Autism.” But this one is different! It’s not all rainbows, unicorns and blessings. The Dark Side of Autism puts raising a child with special needs into perspective with no sugar coating of the reality. With firsthand experience raising a nonverbal child with autism and epilepsy, Angela talks openly and honestly about the true challenges parents face raising a child on the spectrum. With contentious opinions and candid observations, The Dark Side of Autism tells the truth about a dark and difficult subject people don’t like to talk about while fostering awareness for this sometimes debilitating and mostly unknown neurological disorder. This offhanded, direct and vulnerable parenting chronicle will give you a new appreciation for the simple things taken for granted with neuro-typical kids like taking a trip to Disneyland, a full night's sleep and haircuts. Angela often says things people only think to themselves in fear of offending someone. Autism has a dark side---it’s learning to cope with the darkness that can lift you up. If you are a parent with a child with special needs this book may read your mind. Angela is spot on with her darkly funny observations in the world of special needs---from the taunting beeping of a short bus to mastering IEPs with a reoccurring “don’t ask, don’t tell” theme. If you know someone, and chances are you do, caring for a child with special needs, you will gain new insight on what it must be like for them. This book can be easily used as a guide to the stupid things NOT to say to a parent with a mentally or physically challenged child---without checking your “foot in the mouth meter” first. The Dark Side of Autism can help you be a kinder, more compassionate friend, parent, spouse and human.
In 1991, Mark Osteen and his wife, Leslie, were struggling to understand why their son, Cameron, was so different from other kids. At age one, Cam had little interest in toys and was surprisingly fixated on books. He didn’t make baby sounds; he ignored other children. As he grew older, he failed to grasp language, remaining unresponsive even when his parents called his name. When Cam started having screaming anxiety attacks, Mark and Leslie began to grasp that Cam was developmentally delayed. But when Leslie raised the possibility of an autism diagnosis, Mark balked. Autism is so rare, he thought. Might as well worry about being struck by lightning. Since that time, awareness of autism has grown monumentally. Autism has received extensive coverage in the news media, and it has become a popular subject for film, television, and literature, but the disorder is frequently portrayed and perceived as a set of eccentricities that can be corrected with proper treatment. In reality, autism permanently wrecks many children’s chances for typical lives. Plenty of recent bestsellers have described the hardships of autism, but those memoirs usually focus on the recovery of people who overcome some or all of the challenges of the disorder. And while that plot is uplifting, it’s rare in real life, as few autistic children fully recover. The territory of severe autism—of the child who is debilitated by the condition, who will never be cured—has been largely neglected. One of Us: A Family’s Life with Autism tells that story. In this book, Mark Osteen chronicles the experience of raising Cam, whose autism causes him aggression, insomnia, compulsions, and physical sickness. In a powerful, deeply personal narrative, Osteen recounts the struggles he and his wife endured in diagnosing, treating, and understanding Cam’s disability, following the family through the years of medical difficulties and emotional wrangling. One of Us thrusts the reader into the life of a child who exists in his own world and describes the immense hardships faced by those who love and care for him. Leslie and Mark's marriage is sorely tested by their son's condition, and the book follows their progress from denial to acceptance while they fight to save their own relationship. By embracing the little victories of their life with Cam and by learning to love him as he is, Mark takes the reader down a road just as gratifying, and perhaps more moving, than one to recovery. One of Us is not a book about a child who overcomes autism. Instead, it’s the story of a different but equally rare sort of victory—the triumph of love over tremendous adversity.
The co-author of "Asperger's and Girls" presents a no-nonsense guide to teaching children with Asperger's or autism the life skills they will need to function as an adult.
Now an award winning motion picture! Imagine being trapped inside a Disney movie and having to learn about life mostly from animated characters dancing across a screen of color. A fantasy? A nightmare? This is the real-life story of Owen Suskind, the son of the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind and his wife, Cornelia. An autistic boy who couldn't speak for years, Owen memorized dozens of Disney movies, turned them into a language to express love and loss, kinship, brotherhood.The family was forced to become animated characters, communicating with him in Disney dialogue and song; until they all emerge, together, revealing how, in darkness, we all literally need stories to survive. This edition has been updated with additional material from the Suskind family.
The face of autism is changing. And more often than we realize, that face is wearing lipstick. Autism in Heels, an intimate memoir, reveals the woman inside one of autism’s most prominent figures, Jennifer O'Toole. At the age of thirty-five, Jennifer was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, and for the first time in her life, things made sense. Now, Jennifer exposes the constant struggle between carefully crafted persona and authentic existence, editing the autism script with wit, candor, passion, and power. Her journey is one of reverse-self-discovery not only as an Aspie but--more importantly--as a thoroughly modern woman. Beyond being a memoir, Autism in Heels is a love letter to all women. It’s a conversation starter. A game changer. And a firsthand account of what it is to walk in Jennifer's shoes (especially those iconic red stilettos). Whether it's bad perms or body image, sexuality or self-esteem, Jennifer's is as much a human journey as one on the spectrum. Because autism "looks a bit different in pink," most girls and women who fit the profile are not identified, facing years of avoidable anxiety, eating disorders, volatile relationships, self-harm, and stunted independence. Jennifer has been there, too. Autism in Heels takes that message to the mainstream. From her own struggles and self-discovery, she has built an empire of empowerment, inspiring women the world over to realize they aren't mistakes. They are misunderstood miracles.
"In the next five years, hundreds of thousands of children with autism spectrum disorder will reach adulthood. And while diagnosis and treatment for children has improved dramatically in recent years, no one is answering the question that plagues so many parents: What happens to my child when I am no longer able to care for or assist him? In this ground-breaking book, autism expert Chantal Sicile-Kira and her son Jeremy take on the challenge of planning for the full lifespan. Working together and drawing on the insights of others facing the same challenges, they offer real solutions to a host of difficult questions, including how young adults across the autism spectrum can: *negotiate adult life in this new economy where adult service resources are scarce *cope with the difficulties of living apart from the nuclear family *create and maintain a support network, including friends, support staff, and therapists *find and keep a job that provides meaning, stability and an income *discover the joys of fulfilling relationships"--
In this collection of beautiful and raw essays, Amy S. F. Lutz writes openly about her experience—the positive and the negative—as a mother of a now twenty-one-year-old son with severe autism. Lutz's human emotion drives through each page and challenges commonly held ideas that define autism either as a disease or as neurodiversity. We Walk is inspired by her own questions: What is the place of intellectually and developmentally disabled people in society? What responsibilities do we, as citizens and human beings, have to one another? Who should decide for those who cannot decide for themselves? What is the meaning of religion to someone with no abstract language? Exploring these questions, We Walk directly—and humanly—examines social issues such as inclusion, religion, therapeutics, and friendship through the lens of severe autism. In a world where public perception of autism is largely shaped by the "quirky geniuses" featured on television shows like The Big Bang Theory and The Good Doctor, We Walk demands that we center our debates about this disorder on those who are most affected by its impacts.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “As sweet and funny and sad and true and heartfelt a memoir as one could find.” —from the foreword by Augusten Burroughs Ever since he was young, John Robison longed to connect with other people, but by the time he was a teenager, his odd habits—an inclination to blurt out non sequiturs, avoid eye contact, dismantle radios, and dig five-foot holes (and stick his younger brother, Augusten Burroughs, in them)—had earned him the label “social deviant.” It was not until he was forty that he was diagnosed with a form of autism called Asperger’s syndrome. That understanding transformed the way he saw himself—and the world. A born storyteller, Robison has written a moving, darkly funny memoir about a life that has taken him from developing exploding guitars for KISS to building a family of his own. It’s a strange, sly, indelible account—sometimes alien yet always deeply human.
