Book Reviews: The Emotional Cure for Autism

This is my response to the selected Online Book Club Book of the Day review for Emotional Cure for Autism.

Your review is well-written. However, I take exception to the wording of "suffering" from autism. My son is high-functioning autistic. He is much more aware of stimuli (i.e. sounds, texture) than a person who does not have autism, but he would not describe himself as "suffering" from autism, and, I suspect, many people who have autism would not describe themselves that way.

I did not realize my son had autism until he was an adult. He does not respond to being overstimulated the way many of us have been taught to believe that people with autism are "supposed" to respond. He is able to keep overt responses to being overstimulated in check while in public, and then he withdraws for a period of time.

Autism is on a spectrum. There are people like my son whom no-one would realize has autism unless he told them. Then there are those with very overt responses to being overstimulated, i.e. rocking, crying out. Many people on the autism spectrum are highly intelligent and verbally expressive. Some have difficulty responding vocally but are able to write quite cohesively.

I plan to share this book with my son and see what he thinks of the suggestions. I think he would be a much better judge of their effectiveness than I would.

Thank you for your review. 

Further thoughts:
I am curious what my son will think of the suggestions and how he might have responded to them as a child. It's very interesting the way he describes his hyper-awareness to sounds and textures in particular. Sounds that I tend to tune out he is extremely aware of, i.e. the washing machine or the dishwasher. He has to consciously tune these sounds out where I simply do so without thinking about it. In any case, I'm interested to read the book for myself and see what he thinks of it as well

~Cie~