book review

The author is a pediatrician, and of course, the mother of an autistic child.  The book itself is more heavily slanted toward \”this is my professional opinion on how to treat autism.\”  Interestingly, it comes with a personal look into how biomedical doctors are viewed and treated by other doctors.  (Spoiler: not well.)

This is perhaps unsurprising, as the neurodiversity movement and much of medical world views autism as the result of a brain difference (or disorder, depends on who you ask), and only that.  Biomedical doctors tend to view autism as a medical problem, and only that.  Both sides think the other side is deluded and wasting resources better spent helping autistic people using their methods.

I tend to read these biomedical books with a certain amount of annoyance, tempered with patience.  Words like \”healing\” and \”reversing\” and \”erasing\” are just ways of avoiding the word \”cure.\”  They do that because saying \”cure\” around the neurodiversity community tends to produce rather rabidly unfriendly responses.

To understand why that is… imagine you could go into someone\’s genetics, and change their genetic heritage.  You could turn an African American person into a white person.  Now, it\’s well-established that black people in the US get a really raw deal.  Words like \”school-to-prison pipeline\” and \”racial profiling\” and \”police brutality\” come up pretty often.  Now, if you offered the African American community the chance to become white, what do you think they\’d say?

I\’m not saying every last black person in the US would say no, and possibly rudely.  Some autistic people do want to not be autistic, especially if they suffer a lot from complications relating to it.  But to my mind, it\’s kind of the same question.  Asking \”would you like to be cured?\” is like asking someone if they would like part of their culture and personal identity ripped out of them.

Regardless of the exact cause of autism (still undetermined after dozens of years of research), I do think that being autistic is an identity thing, at least as much as it is a disability.  That perspective would likely horrify the author of this book, who likely defines autism as \”all the gut problems, food intolerances, metabolism problems, and social difficulties my child/patient has to deal with.\”  I\’ve commented on this tendency before.

The truth, as it often ends up, is probably somewhere between \”autism is the differences in my brain and my personal culture\” and \”autism is a medical problem that needs to be cured.\”  I tend to favor, \”Autism is a set of brain differences, no two quite the same, and is a culture as well as a diagnosis.  People with autism often have various health issues, depression, anxiety, and social difficulties.  These problematic things should be treated for best results, but the culture around us should also change to accept us, rather than us having to always change to fit in.\”  Which covers both camps, but satisfies neither.  I\’ve been told the best compromises make no one happy, so maybe I\’m winning?

Anyway, the author has a gift for metaphor, and she uses it well in service of describing her preferred treatments for autism.  These include supplementation, killing off any yeast infections, adopting the gluten-free/dairy-free diet, use of hyperbaric chambers, and chelation if needed.

I\’ve discussed supplementation recently, so I\’ll leave that one alone.  I don\’t think I\’ve ever commented on yeast infections, though.  I take probiotics regularly, and one of the things that does is keep a particular type of yeast, candida, under control.  Apparently people with autism can have a massive overgrowth of candida, which has disastrous effects on the intestines and the body in general.

The gluten-free, casein- (dairy) free diet is… kind of hard pill to swallow for most people.  Gluten is in most breads, grains, cereals, pastas, etc.  And dairy is in cheese, milk, ice cream, yogurt, etc.  Now, just imagine having to cut all of that out of your diet, all at once.  That\’s where this book recommends you start.  It has good reason to do so, and the author explains in decent enough detail.  I myself have gone mostly dairy-free, with good results.  I am still flatly refusing to try going gluten-free, though, because of how much of an intense headache it would be.

Hyperbaric chambers are those high pressure chambers they use to treat the bends in divers.  They help the body re-oxygenize at a much higher rate than normally possible.  This isn\’t the first book I\’ve read that suggested they have good effects for autistic people and their parents, and it probably won\’t be the last.

I really don\’t have a decent opinion about chelation. There\’s a lot of conflicting stories being tossed around about its effectiveness and its danger level.  I would tend to suspect that it\’s a medical procedure, which can be dangerous to anyone under the right circumstances, and that it probably shouldn\’t be messed with if you don\’t know what you\’re doing.  This book has a guide to chelation, though it suggests it only if everything else isn\’t working as well as it should be.

The book\’s format is such that, when you go to see a pediatrician for your autistic child, you would take this book with you, having read the appropriate chapter.  It\’s structured around six doctor visits, in about as many chapters, and you can point to the various scientific descriptions, or read from parts to the book, to hopefully help your doctor understand what it is you want and why.

Woven in with all that are stories of the author\’s own child, and several other children she\’s treated in the course of her practice.  She seems to regard them all fondly, and as individuals rather than problems to be solved, which is points in her favor if you ask me.

Read This Book If

Social Stories™ are a method of teaching autistic people, especially children, what to expect from a situation and what their various options are.  They are meant to teach skills and options while encouraging positivity and self-esteem.  While I\’ve never personally had Social Stories™ used to help me deal with situations, I can tell from reading this book and its massive examples section that they would have been really helpful, if presented in a way that didn\’t damage my pride. 

The first section of this book, more the introduction than the first chapter, given the page numbers (ennumerated in Roman numerals, rather than normal numbers), is a 71 page guide with 10 catchy rules for writing your own Social Stories™.  These are actually rather important, as they are far more ways to write a Story wrong than right.  These rules cover tones, perspectives, topics and subjects, vocabulary choices, tenses, sentence types, and even the balance of the types of sentences.

The rest of the book is filled with samples of well written Social Stories™, covering things like fire drills, self-monitoring, birthday parties, and feelings.  I could have, I suppose, skipped the remaining 200 some pages and still given a decent enough review of this book, but as there are a lot of ways to be condescending in a book like this, I did read through the entire thing.  Thankfully I did not find any condescending things to be annoyed at.  I did, however, find some of the example stories had useful concepts attached to them.

One of these is Fort Able.  The set of stories this concept is attached to describe it as a safe, secure place in your brain that is comfortable and full of all the things you like and enjoy.  Their description suggests that there are three steps to get into every Fort Able, and that it has different rooms for these positive, safe things.  A room for photos of favorite people and fun times, a room for favorite songs, movies, video games, videos, a room for scrapbooking anything else positive and enjoyable, and and a mental gymnasium for healthy thoughts to exercise and remember.  In addition, Fort Able is guarded by people who care about the person: so family, friends, etc.  The guards aren\’t just there to keep the place safe, they\’re also there to cheer you on when you succeed, and comfort you when you don\’t. 

Following the directions, I mentally built my own Fort Able, a large pod made of thick brushed steel, with a very comfortable chair in front of a computer with a trio of screens- one for each section they outline your Fort Able having, sans the scrapbooking thing.  I\’m not really a scrapbooking fan, and the other categories seemed to have things covered.  I ended up envisioning one room, rather than several, because I find it annoying and difficult to envision walking between rooms, and remembering where each one is in relation to the other.  Chris (my spouse) and my parents are the only regular guards I envisioned, but the examples suggest a lot of my other friends and family would also qualify.  I like the idea of counting to three, envisioning your feet hitting each step one at a time, before entering Fort Able.  I\’m kind of bad at keeping pictures and concepts like this in my head, but maybe this one will stay.

Another useful concept the book had to offer was its understanding of mistakes.  Autistic people are more prone to black and white thinking than most people, so mistakes can seem like shameful failure rather than the path to success.  I have, at this point, lost count of how many Social Stories™ have specifically addressed making mistakes, but each of them has pointed out that mistakes happen, should be expected, and are good opportunities for learning.  I didn\’t personally grow up with that mentality, and indeed, one of my close relatives displayed a lot of perfectionist characteristics, some of which rubbed off on me.  However, I think at this point in my life, I don\’t consider mistakes miserable failure so much as inevitable annoyances.  That\’s an improvement, but not nearly as good as not getting upset about mistakes at all.

The last major useful concept I noted was that the book introduced change as a thing that is normal, to be expected, and not bad or scary.  I wasn\’t really sure that could be successfully taught, but I presume, since it\’s wired into dozens of these Stories™, that it must be possible.  Considering our general tendency to really really hate change, it\’s probably a good thing to have in there.

Read This Book If

So, say you have a child that doesn\’t look at the people they\’re talking to.  This is a problem, because neurotypical people assume you aren\’t paying attention if you don\’t look at them while you talk.  (It\’s also a problem because some nuances of communication are non-verbal, but it\’s worth pointing out that it\’s a really arbitrary requirement from my perspective.)  Some programs would take this hypothetical child and try to teach them eye contact directly.  85% looking at the person you\’re talking with, 15% looking away.

That isn\’t good enough for the RDI folks.  Instead of simply teaching the skill, they teach the foundations of that skill.   To teach eye contact and paying attention to the person you\’re talking to, they make the environment and play require that eye contact.  If the child doesn\’t pay attention, the activity pauses, restarts, or ends depending on the directions.  This style of teaching is potentially a really good idea.  It\’s a more natural than teaching by rote, and theoretically a more effective way of teaching social skills. (I have to say theoretical, because I\’ve never seen statistics on the subject.)

This book has activities to teach attention, cooperative play, flexibility, voice volume, hand-eye coordination, expression-reading, emotion-recognition, vocal tone recognition, give-and-take conversational skills, etc.  Reading through these, I didn\’t really have objections to the skills specifically chosen.  The same is mostly true of chapter 2, where they describe their components of relationships.  I did take some exception to the first criteria, which was \”Enjoyment\” and insisted that \”Friends must be enjoyable, exciting companions.\”  I\’m not sure I\’ve ever been an \”enjoyable, exciting\” person.  But perhaps the book is specifically referring to friends in childhood, which might explain why I never had friends at that age.

I had a really hard time getting into this book.  It started on a trio of bad notes.  The first was the introduction quote.  Y\’know how some people put dedications to people or favorite quotes at the very front of a book, before even the introduction section where the book itself is discussed?  They\’re usually inspirational quotes, or at least amusing ones.  The quote in the front of this book is a Bible verse.  Specifically, it\’s a Bible verse from Ecclesiastes.  Otherwise known as the book of the Bible that discusses, in great depth, how everything from riches to wisdom to hard work is pointless, because everyone dies and everything is a waste of time without God.

Now, I actually like Ecclesiastes because I\’m weird like that.  But this quote is just a little snippet talking about how two people are better than one, because when one falls the other can help him up, and feel-good stuff like that.  But as a reasonably intelligent, somewhat educated human being, I really have to take exception to a book that purports to be full of helpful advice, quoting from the most depressing book in the Bible with blatant disregard for the rest of that book\’s contents.  So that annoyed me.

The second thing that annoyed me was the book\’s promise of results, with apparent disregard for the child that goes into the program.  There is literally a list of \”social changes\” that you will apparently, without fail, see in your child assuming you do the things in this book.  I don\’t know about you, but I\’ve found, personally, that people with autism vary widely, and expecting a single program, even an excellent and relatively flexible one, to magically produce the same (exceedingly idealistic) results in every autistic child it\’s applied to… well, it seems arrogant and absurd, frankly.

The last thing that annoyed me at the start of reading the book was its language choices.  The book is meant to be used by parents, teachers/special ed teachers, and therapists, but the language used is pedantic and formal.  I found it cumbersome to understand, and this is coming from someone with a BA in psychology and a well-practiced skill in reading…  I don\’t envy any parents, particularly ones that aren\’t college-educated, the experience of trying to read through this book and adapt the activities for use at home. 

That said, a lot of the activities could probably work reasonably well, if used properly.  The earliest ones seemed to rely strongly upon the \”Coach\” (their name for the parent, therapist, teacher, etc) and their ability to bluff (or be really good at taking on and projecting) their emotions. The activities are made fun, not because they\’re actually fun, but because the Coach is instructed to smile, laugh, and engage in \”fun\” behaviors.

The activities work their way toward teaching the child that interaction, especially interaction with their peers, is fun.  I don\’t think I\’ve ever seen the word \”joy\” printed so many times in such a dry context.  I can only hope these methods really do work, and in the long term, because the way I tend to approach interactions is not at all with joy, and more with a general cautious neutrality.  Sort of the way you approach a friendly but inexplicably venomous dog.  It probably won\’t bite you and cause you suffering, but some days you just really don\’t want to take that chance.

My only other concern was that the activities listed didn\’t seem to account for an comorbid problems, particularly sound sensitivity or touch sensitivity.  The earliest activities seemed to suggest tickling and roughhousing as \”fun\” and \”enjoyable\” activities with children.  And I can tell you I have hated being tickled since I was quite young, so that really wouldn\’t have worked well.  I can\’t speak so strongly for roughhousing, but considering the fact that I was bullied quite young, I can\’t imagine I\’d like it all that much more.  Preusmably situations like mine would be accounted for by a therapist with more training than simply this book… but I do wonder what their tactic would be when someone with sound sensitivity covers their ears and curls up at the first sign of other children and their loud, shrieky noises.

Read This Book If

Iris Grace, for those not familiar (like me before I read this book), is a autistic child artist with remarkable talents in impressionistic and watercolor art.  Her story has become something of an international success, and her work is kind of gorgeous.  You can find the official website for her work and story here.

From reading this book, I would gauge that Iris would qualify as at least \”moderately affected\” by ASD, which is to say, she has (or had) a lot of barriers to learning to speak, learning how to relax, filtering out excessive noise, dealing with new people, etc.  So this is not just another \”my kid with Asperger\’s/High Functioning Autism, and our trip through finding what worked.\”  The book describes Iris\’ difficulties in detail, and they were extensive.  I suspect if you asked my parents, they would tell you I didn\’t have nearly as hard of a time when I was growing up.

Onto the book.  First and foremost, I should point out that the marketing and title is a little disingenuous.  While Thula the cat was definitely an important addition to Iris\’ development and growth, I personally feel the biggest asset to Iris\’ successful development was her parents  The cat, if the book is accurate, is an amazingly sensitive, helpful, responsive therapeutic companion, beyond the ken of most cats.  It genuinely cares about Iris, has some of the loyal, hard working traits of a dog, and acts as a service animal.  That is a great thing for someone on the autism spectrum.

That said… having a comforting and loyal animal helper is good, but it\’s not going to teach you social skills, bring you opportunities to try new things, or develop friendships.  Those things, her parents had to provide.  And provide they did, often by trial and error, and with lots of careful observation, creativity, resources, and patience.  From art supplies to animal companionship to carefully-tailored home-schooling, her parents stretched themselves to their emotional limits and beyond, nurturing their daughter\’s creativity and interests.

But I suppose the book probably wouldn\’t have sold as well if it had been titled, \”Iris Grace: How We Leveraged Our Abundant Love, Patience, Time and Resources to Bring Up a Talented Artist.\”  That would be a more accurate title, given the contents of the book.  The family in question is definitely on the \”well off\” side of things.  That fact shouldn\’t cheapen their efforts in any way, because it\’s not like they ignored their child and hired help to get around her barriers and disabilities.  Both parents were very much involved in Iris\’ life, personally acting as her teachers, caretakers, therapists, etc.  I point out the fact of their wealthiness, however, because if both parents had been working full time jobs outside the house, I suspect Iris\’ artistic skills would never have developed, or reached such a wide international audience.  She would have simply joined the ranks of autistic children relegated to being called, \”disobedient, non-communicative problem children.\”

Looking at the gorgeous and complex interplay of colors in the artwork peppered throughout the book, that would have been a sad loss.  Which makes me wonder what talents lie in other non-verbal or low-verbal autistic children and adults, which we\’re deprived of right now, due to lack of time, understanding, and resources.

Among the things Iris\’ parents did right was spending a lot of time trying to get into her world, rather than insisting Iris immediately engage their world and assuming that was the only correct way to be a person.  Her mother describes experiencing the world through watching Iris engage with it, especially their garden and other outdoor areas.

In addition, they individually tailored her education and social experiences.  To the best of my understanding, when looking for a good school system for their kids, most parents simply toss all their kids into the best school system they can find, and call it good.  But Iris\’ difficulties with clothes meant that none of the schools in the area would work.   The school uniform was required, they said, and assured the parents that any difficulties would be handled.  Uncertain that this was a good plan her parents took it upon themselves to homeschool her, wracking their brains to align her interests (cats, outdoors, art, etc) with the required subjects for an education (math, science, reading, writing, etc).  When there was no social group (children\’s club) that would meet Iris\’ growing social needs, they made one themselves and hosted it at their own home.

They also didn\’t try to push Iris too hard at once.  They did put her into new situations and try new things, but they were always ready to call it quits if it proved too difficult.  There was always a place for her to go and relax, or items of comfort to help her cope with the uncertainties and unpredictability of life.  This is very important for people on the spectrum.  We always need a Square One, a safe place or person to rely on.  Sometimes we need a lot of Square Ones, depending on how complex our lives are. 

In an ideal world, every autistic child would have this level of care and attention paid to their needs and interests. I hope that some day this will be the case.  In the meantime, it\’s heartening to read this story of parents that faced the trials of having an autistic child together, gave it their all, and found that in the end, their child faced her difficulties and surpassed their expectations. 

Read This Book If

That Accursed Nagging Doubt

Why do this?  Well…  Mr. Robison and I share a common trait, which I suspect is probably common amongst the autistic population as a whole.  That is, we indelibly, irrevocably know, from a lifetime of having it drilled into our skulls silently by society\’s actions and words… that we are second-class people.  Broken, or twisted, or sick, or not quite right, the wording varies based on the person.  Social skills are a meta-skill that almost every job, place, and situation in life requires, and lacking them is an unutterable, unacceptable, intolerable sin.  It makes people draw away from you.  It hinders relationships, stunts personal connections, and places a giant \”AVOID\” sign on your back. 

This is not right, it is not fair, and it is certainly not acceptable.  Dr. Temple Grandin addresses this mentality with her \”Different, Not Less\” philosophy.  And while that\’s a beautiful, shining example of how things should be… it\’s one thing to mentally accept and earnestly try to live a philosophy, and quite another to believe it down to your bones.  And from Mr. Robison\’s writings, he was about where I am now when he started this study: rightfully proud of his strengths and accomplishments, but tormented by the nagging doubt that because of his social weaknesses, disabilities, and eccentricities, he was a second-class person. 

That nagging doubt was why Mr. Robison left two successful careers.  The first was in musical engineering, making unique sound and lighting systems for KISS and other bands of the time.  He made the flame-spitting guitars, for example, along with many of the odder sound effects they employed.  But he left because he didn\’t feel like he was doing well enough, despite being a resounding success.  He went to work at a big toy company, designing innovative circuit boards for the newest toys.  And there, too, he did an excellent job.  But he felt like a fish out of water, unappreciated and disliked, unable to improve his ability to read people and work with them, and so eventually he left that field too.  Both things he excelled at, despite his social difficulties and disabilities.  But the guilt and the doubt undermined him until he couldn\’t stand it, and left.  You can read all about this in his book \”Look me in the Eye,\” by the way.

I would probably say that that same doubt might be why I\’ve never really succeeded a lot at any one thing.  I have known, since I was pretty little, that I\’m different.  I\’ve never really fit in, and that takes a toll on a person.  I have some talent in music, but between my very musically gifted (and slightly judgemental) parents and my anxiety, practicing regularly was quite beyond me, growing up.  And you can\’t learn an instrument without practicing, so eventually I failed out of that.  I still sing, but not a lot.

I went to college for psychology, where I promptly failed to fit in and was even kicked out of a group project for it.  All the eggheads in the psychology department promptly failed to either notice or make any accommodations it.  And it turns out not even college could make formalized learning fun and accessible to me.  So I chose not to subject myself to graduate school, which would simply have been more money and more suffering.

I\’d minored in software development, so I did that instead for a few years, first for the public library and then for a company that used some of the same technology I\’d worked with at the library… but I don\’t love coding, and I\’m not a natural-born, intuitive coder… so between that and the lack of social skills as padding for when I didn\’t succeed, I failed out of that, too.

In theory, I might have succeeded at any of those fields.  In practicality, I just… couldn\’t.  It was depressing to notice that parallel between Mr. Robison\’s experience and mine.  With the exception, of course, that Mr. Robison has been a smashing success by objective measures at least three times in his life, whereas I… can pretty much just say I graduated college. Woo…

Other Parallels

LENS vs TMS

I spent a lot of time reading this book.  Over a month, in fact.  I\’d meant to read it and review it quickly, to have it as part of my buffer for last month.  That… did not happen.  At all.  I spent so much time reading and being overwhelmed by what I was reading, that the book loan actually expired twice before I was able to get this written.

I was so overwhelmed because the way Mr. Robison describes TMS is very similar to how I\’ve experienced LENS , over the last couple years, and even my learning how to interact with people over a decade and a half. And even beyond that, in some ways.  He describes being able to look into peoples\’ eyes and see their souls (though that ability didn\’t last), and suddenly being able to recognize how a person was feeling and why.  He started being able to recognize intent and behavioral abuses better, and was able to prune out the nasty people in his customer base at his car repair shop as well as relationships in his life that were destructive. 

In short, he was able to do in a couple years what\’s taken me most of my adolescence and a good chunk of my adulthood to manage.  If you read the book carefully, you\’ll notice that it wasn\’t specifically the TMS that gave him the lasting ability to do that.  The TMS energized his brain and activated brain pathways that gave him those abilities in the short term, but what made them last was the fact that he tried very hard to use them once they were energized, and kept trying to use them.  He compares it to sled tracks.  The more you use that pathway, the more ingrained it becomes.  Effectively, the TMS made it possible for him to learn those skills and abilities.

The LENS, on my end of things, has increased my social skills capabilities.  I\’m able to smile at things more, for example, and the smiles are actually believable and more genuine-looking rather than clearly forced even though I\’m trying to be genuine.  I\’m not as emotionally blocked up, either, which helps in sorting and dealing with issues in my life.  Which isn\’t to say it\’s not challenging.  Just that it\’s progress.  I am thus able to express myself and my emotions better, which is more comforting and relatable to neurotypical people than a stone face and stiff body posture. 

Reading this book and the various side effects and experiences of Mr. Robison and some of the other volunteers for the experiment, I can fairly safely say that it sounds like LENS is a slower, more careful version of TMS.  Not all of the test subjects of Mr. Robison\’s study had so happy of results, and in truth, because the changes happened to Mr. Robison so quickly, his marriage became strained and finally fell apart.  He tells how he eventually bounced back and all seems more or less well at the present time, but if he\’d had more time to process the changes, perhaps he might have found a way to make the marriage work, or at least gotten some help rather than standing by feeling helpless. 

Our brains are very delicate instruments.  I\’ve mentioned how the LENS has sort of built up the circuits in my brain to function better.  If all of that had happened at once, I might well have had a mental breakdown.  This is actually why my LENS-doctor tends to be very careful about how she uses the LENS.  She works with people of all kinds, and has found through years of experience that change is best introduced gradually and carefully, especially to people who already have sensitive systems.

John Elder Robison is a very stable, grounded guy, I feel, from reading this book and some of his other works.  But some of the other participants weren\’t, as much.  As a rule, I feel like it\’s not wise to assume stability in a population that\’s put under so much pressure.  So while TMS is definitely an option for therapy, I\’d be more inclined to support LENS as the therapy of the future, particularly if the costs could be reduced.  That said, in my view, almost anything would be preferable to the medication-mill that is our current system of treatment…  TMS and LENS work directly with the brain, which is where the autism, the depression, and the anxiety live, as far as we can tell.  Medication takes a much more indirect route to its results, and the side effects can be brutally awful. 

Read This Book If

You want to live the experience of a lifetime through the eyes of an eloquent, thoughtful, grounded writer.  The changes he experienced in the course of this book are monumental, and possibly a glimpse of the future.  Mr. Robison is a fine writer, easy to understand, yet powerfully descriptive.  He\’s also a very pro-science man, to the point where I\’m honestly not sure why some college hasn\’t awarded him an honorary degree or three.  I haven\’t yet found a book of his I didn\’t like.  Check it out!

This book seems to be marketed at people like the author himself, that is, autistic people who like video games.  But in truth, this book could serve anyone well, as long as they\’re willing to put in the effort to try the various \”quests.\”  While the book references many different video games, it also takes care to explain those references in enough detail that you can understand them without playing the actual games.  In fact, I was clued into this book\’s existence by a non-gamer relative of mine. 

As a gamer of the female sex, before it was acceptable to be a gamer girl, I mostly kept to myself and played single-player games in short stints.  This was in large part because of my parents, who insisted that video games rotted your brain.  I was 16 when I started sneaking handheld video games into the house, and it took that long because that was how long it took me to find out that video games were fun to play with friends.  Before that, I was stuck with limited gaming time using our computer, and mainly using my brother\’s video games at that.

As such, I\’d only personally played a third of the games listed in the book, and of those, actually gotten to spend a lot of time with 2-3 of them.  Fortunately, as I mentioned above, the games and the concepts the author draws from them are well explained.  I don\’t think a non-gamer would need to play any of the games in the book to understand the ideas in each chapter.

Onto the actual book: the advice and suggested courses of action (\”quests\”) seemed very sound to me.  In large part, the book didn\’t have a lot of new concepts or tricks to offer me specifically, but it did offer entirely new ways of thinking about those things, and making them make sense.  Some basic things in the \”quests\” include going new places, doing new things, making a point of practicing social interaction multiple times a day, and practicing reading body language. 

Basically, in less than 150 pages, the author gives you a workable plan (broken into bite size pieces) for going from reclusively hermitting to being actively social and engaged in the larger world.  He doesn\’t underestimate how difficult this can be, either, which I appreciated.

Read This Book If

I was quite incorrect in my initial reaction.  The book is in fact mainly comprised of short essays from people on the spectrum.  These are organized by topic, and the topics were chosen by asking autistic people which issues cause the most stress to them.  The end result is that these topics are generally the most relevant to the widest population.  In fact, in my personal case, there were only two of the seventeen chapters that weren\’t relevant to my immediate life and needs.  Included in this book are suggestions on managing anxiety, self-image, sensory issues, bullying, career and job advice, depression, and personal organization.

Each chapter begins with a short introduction to the topic, like \”Making and Keeping Friends,\” and then proceeds right into the essays by the contributing autistic authors.  Most of these are between a half page and three pages long, so not intensely involved reading.  At least four essays appear per topic, sometimes quite a few more than that.  After the essays finish, editor Tony Attwood has a say on the subject, based on his extensive experience with autistic people. 

The back of the book lists the \”Aspie mentors,\” or the sources of the various essays that begin each chapter.  I was pleased to see that most of them hail from what I call \”The Lost Generation,\” or the generation prior to the introduction of Asperger\’s Syndrome and the idea that being autistic didn\’t mean you had to be intellectually disabled.  I call it \”The Lost Generation\” because many of the autistic people that lived and died in those years never knew they were autistic, and in a lot of cases, got shunted into institutions with incorrect diagnoses such as schizophrenia.  I hate being near old mental institutions for that reason.  It\’s almost like I can hear the anguished screams and the misery.  All of which would have been preventable with a little more knowledge and a large dose of human empathy. 

The very youngest contributor of this book is only two years older than I am, but a number of the authors were born in the \’40s and \’50s.  Many of the authors talk about only getting their diagnosis in their 50s and 40s.  Also of note, these authors aren\’t all from the US.  There is a smattering of authors from Australia, the UK, and even one from Pakistan.  The editors kept the \”British-isms\” and other non-US grammar styles in the book, so I kept noticing words like \”learnt\” instead of \”learned,\” and other minor differences.  I had no trouble understanding what the authors were getting at, though.

Finally, I can safely say that much, if not all, of this book is useful, relevant, and helpful.  Between the efforts to make the topics of discussion as widely relevant as possible, and the care put into choosing the essays, I think this is a fine book, and quite useful.  I am seriously considering putting it on my wishlist for my birthday and Christmas, which would be a first for any of my book reviews.

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This one is better than most.  It\’s also a little more focused than most.  Specifically, it focuses on Asperger\’s Syndrome, or high-functioning autism.  The authors were aware this classification was going the way of the dinosaur with the current edition of the DSM, but released this book anyway in case it would help people.  I think it well might.

The first thing that set this book apart from other \”complete guide\” books for me was that it took the time to have a section for autistic women.  It has, in the past, been assumed that autism is mainly a masculine disability, because the diagnostic rate is so much higher for boys than it is for girls.  There\’s even a researcher out there that postulates that autism is a disorder that involves a \”hyper male mind,\” which is to say that all autistic people are more masculine and have more stereotypically \”male\” traits than the average person.

I, personally, do not find that line of research terribly accurate or helpful.  Neither does this book, because it takes more than ten pages to explain how autism can look different in girls as they grow up.  It also explains how symptoms can take longer to show up in girls with autism, sometimes only becoming obvious in preteen and teenage years.

Another section that set this book apart from most \”complete guide\” books I\’ve read is that it included a section on social skills, and how to teach them.  I found the section a little short and bare bones, but it seemed accurate enough for a start.  And it did catch most of the major pitfalls: taking turns in conversations, personal space, the problem with telling the absolute truth, avoiding being the \”rules enforcer,\” personal hygiene, etc.  I would\’ve liked to see a section on making small talk, as that was a major stumbling block for me, but perhaps the authors assumed the parents already knew how to handle that.

I was pleased, also, to see a section on bullying included.  Bullying is a huge problem when it comes to autistic people.  While most people experience a little bit of nastiness in middle school, autistic people are much more prone to being a favorite target, or even getting hit with it much younger, like me.  I was a favorite bullying target starting in either Kindergarten or 1st grade, I can\’t remember which, and that continued until my family moved away after 3rd grade.  I was easy to wind up, and predictable.  Also, no one would come to my defense.  And this all happened before cyber-bullying took the stage.  Today\’s kids have even more ways to be psychologically abused.  So unfortunately, the subject merits a lot of discussion and information. 

The book also includes a much-needed section on taking care of your family as a whole, making sure the siblings also get attention, self-care, and advice for handling family outings.  This is excellent, because these subjects tends to get ignored in the mess of handling the \”autism crisis.\”  Unfortunately, ignoring your own well-being for the sake of others eventually wears you out, which is counter-productive.  A sad, stressed out family makes for a sad, stressed-out autistic person.  Happily, I\’m starting to see more workshops and such available for siblings of special-needs people, and more for the parents as well. 

My last comment on the matter is that my original diagnosis was Asperger\’s Syndrome, rather than autism, as defined by the DSM-IVR.  So I did see a lot of myself in the pages of this book.  While I don\’t particularly think Asperger\’s Syndrome should be distinct from autism as a whole, I do think this book has an eye towards a specific section of the autism spectrum, and perhaps that section has mannerisms, tendencies, and behaviors in common.  The book would probably have been improved by having an actual autistic person review its contents, as I became miffed on a couple occasions by some apparent oversights in understanding our point of view, but it does fairly well even without that.

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This is a short book, less than 150 pages, but it\’s a very emotional one.  Some of the chapters are poetry, written by a thoughtful, deeply involved and spiritually alive mother and Christian.  Most, however, are short stories with reflections of how her autistic son, Joel, brought her and the people around them closer to God.  Each non-poetry chapter comes with a prayer at the end, somewhat reminiscent of those \”daily devotions\” books my parents read at the dinner table after the dishes have been cleared away.

Each and every one of these stories are written in the perspective of the mother, letting you have a glimpse into the trials she faced and overcame in the course of raising her son from birth to high school graduation, and beyond.  Those trials are not insignificant.  Unlike me, Joel has an intellectual disability in addition to his autism, and he developed some extra challenging behaviors as he grew up.

I mostly read this book soberly, saddened by the hardships and frayed nerves and miscommunications, but this book is not a sad one.  Each chapter is a separate alleluia to God for his guidance, her son, and sometimes other people involved in the story.  Many of the stories start out, or at least middle with, a groan, which at the end turns to the alleluia.  Perhaps I\’m too inclined to depression to pick up the joy and thankfulness.

I did note, with some amusement, however, that Joel and I did have something in common.  We both hated sitting through church services.  I had it a bit better under control than he did, as the author bemoans and recounts the general pattern of the church services, with Joel eventually losing interest and patience and declaring church to be over midway through the prayer, and that it was time to have doughnuts.

I personally chafed at sitting through the sermons.  That dislike lasted clear into my sophomore year of college, and while I resumed going to church, I continued to tune out the sermon.  I\’ve come to understand that\’s partially because of the content of the sermons I was exposed to.  Current events were not addressed.  Instead, the preachers my father favored liked to elucidate particular passages of the Bible, in great depth and with multiple points to each sermon. That\’s very well if you know the source material, and have enough patience to sit through 30-45 minutes of fine-toothed combing.  If such a child exists, I was not them.

My favorite book of the Bible when I was little was Revelation, full of fantastical (and evil) beasts, fire from the heavens, mythological overtones, angels, and a great and beautiful city.  Revelation reads more like a story than a history book or a lecture.  I liked the mental pictures, which captured my attention more thoroughly than any lecture could.  Besides, I\’d read the Bible cover to cover before I turned 9.  Some of the books bored me half to death, and wouldn\’t you know, it was usually those boring books that became sermons.

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