Our Family's Story of Autism and Hope
by Curt Warner
Sometimes a parent (or grandparent) just wants to hear someone else's story in order to believe that it will all work out in the end. I'd like to say this is a good book for that--it was certainly why I chose it. (Plus, it was available at the library)
And it was a good book for telling one man's story of how he and his wife survived their twin boys growing up on a pretty severe range of the spectrum. But for me it was scary as heck. Their boys weren't mean or cruel, but they were very physical and pretty much lacked the self control you'd hope a kid would develop by age five or so. So they acted out against themselves and their surroundings so severely that the man and his wife pretty much walled themselves off in isolation for a lot of years.
You couldn't blame them, either--there wasn't a lot of help for kids like their in those days. But parts of the book were very scary.
I didn't come away with any tips or any information about what they did which helped or didn't help. Other than the diet thingy. The wife became convinced that some of their self-harm was an attempt to deal with stomach issues from a crappy diet, and she may have been right. But again, the book was very shy on specific details about stuff like that. Or maybe I skimmed them, sorry. Overall, it's probably not a waste of time to read it, but I wouldn't recommend it all that highly.
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