The Anti-Romantic Child: A Memoir of Unexpected Joy – A Luminous Journey Through Hyperlexia and Parenting Transformation

by Priscilla Gilman

“ TheAnti-Romantic Child is remarkable. This haunting and lyrical memoir will bean invaluable and heartening guide to all who find themselves in similarsituations and indeed anyone confronting an unforeseen challenge.” —MarieBrenner, writer for Vanity Fair andauthor of Apples and Oranges
 
With an emotionally resonant combination of memoirand literature, Wordsworth scholar Priscilla Gilman recounts the challenges ofraising a son with hyperlexia, a developmentaldisorder neurologically counterpoint to dyslexia. Gilman explores thecomplexities of our hopes and expectations for our children and ourselves. Withluminous prose and a searing, personal story evocative of A Year of MagicalThinking and A Year of Reading Proust , Gilman’s The Anti-RomanticChild is an unforgettable exploration of what happens when we lean toembrace the unexpected.  

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Parenting, Autistic Spectrum Disorder, Biography Memoir, Family, Disability

304 pages, Paperback

First published April 19, 2011

About the author

Priscilla Gilman is a former professor of English literature at both Yale University and Vassar College and the author of The Anti-Romantic Child: A Story of Unexpected Joy (Harper), and The Critic's Daughter, to be published by Norton in February, 2023. She graduated from Yale summa cum laude, with exceptional distinction in the English major. She went on to earn her masters and Ph.D. in English and American literature at Yale and spent two years as an assistant professor of English at Yale and four years as an assistant professor of English at Vassar College before leaving academia in 2006. From 2006-2011, she worked as a literary agent at Janklow & Nesbit Associates, representing a wide range of literary fiction, inspirational memoir, wellness, and psychology/education books. During these years, she also taught poetry appreciation to inmates in a restorative justice program and to New York City public school students and spoke at numerous early childhood and education conferences and events.

The Anti-Romantic Child, Gilman’s first book, was excerpted in Newsweek magazine and featured on the cover of its international edition. It received starred reviews in Publishers Weekly and Booklist, was an NPR Morning Edition Must-Read, Slate‘s Book of the Week, selected as one of the year’s Best Books by the Leonard Lopate Show, and chosen as a Best Book of the year by The Chicago Tribune. The Anti-Romantic Child was one of five nominees for a Books for a Better Life Award for Best First Book and was awarded the Mom’s Choice Gold Award, rewarding the best in family-friendly media and literature. Andrew Solomon called it “rapturously beautiful and deeply moving, profound, and marvelous.” Gilman’s second book, The Critic’s Daughter, will be published by W.W. Norton; a memoir about her relationship with her brilliant and complicated father, the late drama and literary critic Richard Gilman, it is set in the heyday of intellectual culture in New York of the 1970s and 80s.

Gilman has written about literature, parenting, autism, and education and reviewed fiction and literary non-fiction for the Daily Beast, The New York Times Book Review, The New York Times’ Motherlode, The Chicago Tribune, MORE, O: The Oprah Magazine, Real Simple, Redbook, the Boston Globe, and Huff Post Parents. Her New York Times op-ed, “Don’t Blame Autism for Newtown,” was the most shared piece on the site for two days after its publication and her piece for Slate, “’My Spaceship Knows Which Way To Go’: How David Bowie Helped my Autistic Son Become Himself,” has been read by millions of people worldwide after being praised and shared by the official David Bowie website and social media accounts.

Since 2011, Gilman has taught literature in countless settings: private book groups, classes for Yale Alumni College, an Asian literature book group for the Asia Society in Manhattan, workshops in high schools and at non-profits for Humanities New York, graduate seminars for medical students at Mt Sinai Medical School, high school English classes at the Collegiate School and Grace Church School. She was the parenting/education advice columnist for #1 New York Times bestselling author Susan Cain’s Quiet Revolution website and since 2013, has been a regular book critic for the Boston Globe. She speaks frequently at schools, conferences, and organizations about parenting, education, autism, and the arts. She has received fellowships and grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Speranza Foundation, the Whiting Foundation, and the New York Council for the Humanities. In 1997, Gilman won the Yale College Graduate Prize Teaching Fellowship; in 2019, she won the Yale Alumni College Distinguished Teaching award. In 2018, she became a certified Mindfulness and Loving-Kindness meditation teacher.

Reviews

[Nette · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is the funniest unintentionally funny book I've ever read (and it's utterly humorless, so that's quite an achievement). Pampered author, herself the daughter of NYC intellectual royalty, meets and marries a smart guy with obvious mental issues, pops out a genius kid with emotional problems, and intersperses her tale with romantic poetry to try and make sense of the whole thing, when the whole thing can be summed up with two unromantic words: "Shit happens." Plus, it's unbelievably braggy. (Drinking game: take a shot every time she says something like this: "'Your mind is too good to waste,' one [teacher] said in an admonishing voice." You'll be unconscious by the end of chapter one.) And self-obsessed? When her announcement about leaving academia is overshadowed by that pesky 9/11, she can barely hide her peevishness. Please God, let somebody arrange a steel cage wrestling match between this woman and the Tiger Mom and let them battle to the death on Pay Per View.

[Julie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I checked this book out of the library after my husband forwarded me an education blog post that quoted the book. I spent the past two weeks slogging through what I found to be a narcissistic refusal to acknowledge reality. I get the whole idea of having this romantic ideal child before your kid is born and then having to face the truth once the baby is here that life isn't all roses and puppies and rainbows and hey, your kid's diapers stink just like every other diaper on the planet. However, Ms. Gilman doesn't abandon this ideal after her son arrives and continues to quote Wordsworth throughout the entire book, comparing her real-life kid to poems. Everything he does is "romantic".

Unfortunately, Ms. Gilman (who seems to see herself as a tragic figure because her parents divorced and her father was dying ten years after a cancer diagnosis) has a first-born son who isn't perfect and doesn't measure up to her ideal. The child has autism whether or not she admits it. She keeps pressing hyperlexia which can be a splinter skill within the autism spectrum, not its own diagnosis. She makes excuse after excuse for not getting a full evaluation for a diagnosis, probably because her worst fear (as stated in a recalled conversation with her son's doctor) was that he would be found autistic. Her words were "Because that would mean his brain was fundamentally askew, that he couldn't improve or get better or if he could, his life would be essentially constricted and limited, and that he wouldn't have what I believe matters most is life: loving, intimate relationships with other people." Ms. Gilman needs to get out of her sheltered, New York existence and into reality because that doesn't describe the majority of the people with autism I know, and especially not ones who are as high functioning as her son is as described. It's insulting.

In addition to refusing to honestly acknowledge his deficits, the author doesn't develop his gifts either. He isn't allowed to move ahead in math or reading because he isn't "emotionally ready". Those gifts are what will eventually employ her kid when he grows up if he's able to hold a job. She celebrates being able to keep him in the same school from kindergarten through high school, sheltering him from the world. She is not doing him any favors.

The book itself is a hard read not only because of all of the superfluous Wordsworth but because I just wanted to smack the author with a clue by four. Hiding your head in the sand concerning a child's disability does no one any favors, least of all the child. I'm sick and tired of seeing people refuse to seek help for their children who desperately need evaluation - I don't have any patience elsewhere for the same.

[Christina · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was really intrigued by this book at the start -- the story of a boy so incredibly brilliant that his parents don't realize until he's about three that there is something seriously different about him. It was fascinating to read of his early reading, his obsession with books and words, but also his inability to interact with people and the anxieties he was plagued with.

The constant interweaving of Wordsworth poems, and the author's analysis of them, were just a little obsessive to me; half the book seemed like a memoir and the other half an English doctoral thesis. I also felt like a bit of the book was the author's attempt to prove just how much she'd done for her son and the results that came from her valiant efforts. I'm only a few chapters away from the book's end, but it's due back at the library and I'm just not captivated enough to finish it.

[Jennifer Hudak · Rating 5 out of 5]

A memoir written by a woman whose child is hyperlexic. Hyperlexia is one of the diagnoses that fit (and still fits) my daughter. Hyperlexic children show an early and extreme fascination with letters and numbers, often teaching themselves to read before the age of four. They also exhibit sensory issues, fine and gross motor delays, and social difficulties While people debate whether it is a distinct diagnosis or always co-morbid with autism, the challenges are often similar. My daughter taught herself the alphabet at 16 months and was reading at age 3. She was diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder at age 3.5. Like the author of this memoir, I was teaching college English when my child was born. The author's experiences rang so true for me, almost painfully so: both her child's challenges as well as the way in which she became disenchanted with, and eventually left, the academic world. While at times her linking of her experiences with the poetry of Wordsworth seemed a bit forced, this was a cathartic read for me.

[Lisa Maruca · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is a poignant irony in the fate of two English grad students who produce a child with, of all problems, hyperlexia, and Gilman is honest in the journey she takes from feeling brashly proud of her genius child to worried about his quirks, and from despair over the limits that diagnosis places on individual complexity, to quiet pride in all her son's real and hard-earned accomplishments. As a fellow lover of Wordsworth, I could appreciate Gilman's attempt to use his poetry to structure her memoir about raising an exceptional--in all senses of the word--child, but that motif becomes strained and tiresome after a while. In the end, this is fascinating read about raising a unique child that should resonate with all parents who struggle to meet the needs of children who are square pegs in a round world.

The Anti-Romantic Child can be seen as similar to, but not as profound or as moving as Ian Brown's Boy in the Moon about his son's much more serious disabilities. Brown uses his personal story to reflect on what it means to be human in a fundamental way. Gilman's work may be more usefully compared to A Jane Austen Education by William Deresiewicz, also a former English Professor relating literature to everyday life--is this perhaps a new trend? (It's also personally interesting to me that I read this right after completing We Need to Talk about Kevin a novel about a difficult child of a very different sort --I'm evidently on a parent-child kick.)

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although I didn't share Gilman's understanding of Wordsworth, the poet gave a great deal of comfort to Gilman as she embarked on her journey into mothering a child different "normal." I found a great deal of guidance in the way she handled doctors, educators, and family.

Gilman's son has a developmental disorder I'd not heard of yet her struggles resonated with my own. The difference between us (apart from the diagnosis) was her incredible articulation of her feelings, ideas, thoughts, and lack of blame. Far too often when writing a memoir, the author feels the need to unload unnecessary negative feelings toward a particular person in their life. Priscilla had many opportunities to do so, as many of those we deal with when advocating for our child do not understand nor help, but she refrained.

Besides Priscilla's articulation and lack of denial, she recalled with perfect clarity, the feelings of each step and acceptance that parenting of Benj was not going to be a quick fix. I loved her early acceptance of that. It would be a life long journey of understanding, accommodating, and accepting. Her reframing Benj's disability into his personality and perceptions was beautifully done. Of course, in order to relate to others, her son needed to acquire certain skills and she and her husband fastidiously sought the best way for him to learn and use them. At the same time, her son didn't need to change on a fundamental level. He was beautiful and wonderful just the way he was. He didn't need to fit into a mold of what society deemed as "normal." Normal is subjective in every sense.

Rather than share my own journey of parenting and feelings of exhaustion and inadequacy, I will simply state that the author's book is not only beautifully written but validating. It touched a cerebral and emotional part of me. Not all children are as high maintenance as others and will meet the societal demands more easily than others. However, the best and most validating example of quirky kids equals normal is the television show "The Middle." Watch it, look for the hidden cameras in your house for their story ideas, read this book, and feel validated that the children you are raising came pre-programmed, quirky, and they will rise to the occasion, too.

[Angie · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Anti-Romantic Child

This was a First Reads giveaway I was lucky enough to win and I was excited to dive when it came in the mail a few weeks later. 

While I understand that the opening of the book is meant to set up the romantic nature and charmed life of the author, it didn't sit quite right with me. It's not a life most readers are going to be able to identify with - the pre-war upper westside childhood apartment, the weekend home in Connecticut, trips to Spain - and immediately imposes a disconnect between the author and the reader. It all felt a little too clean, a little too pretty, a little too romantic.  (yes, I get it)

So the beginning? I didn't love it. That said, I wish I had pushed through the start of the book faster than I had because after that it got much better, instead of allowing myself to be distracted by other reads.   It moved along quickly and the reader is really able to get a feel for what the author felt and experienced during the diagnosis and subsequent treatment efforts of her special needs child. 

It would be a fantastic read for anyone with a child with similar needs. However, I was struck time and time again by how naive the author came across - often seeming truly shocked that things didn't work out the way she had expected them to have gone. 

I fully understand the theme of a Wordsworth-ian child was needed to be carried throughout the book, but after awhile I was left saying "enough already." It's apparent early on that the author relates everything in her life to poetry and in parenting specifically to Wordsworth, I don't need to be reminded me of it every few pages for nearly 300 pages.  Sometimes things don't need to "prettied up" and huge chunks of this book felt like it was written with far more florals and charms than was necessary. Occasionally, it was distracting. 

I did enjoy the book and that said, I think I would be an important read for anyone with a child in a similar situation as Benj, particularly if the parents my not have access to the stock of doctors, teachers and therapists that Benj was blessed with. 

[Jane Hammons · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a memoir and a "parenting" book that deserves a wide audience. It is beautifully written and unique, not only in the account of Benj, the child with hyperplexia (a condition much more complex than its name might suggest--it is not merely the reverse of dyslexia), but also because Gilman chooses to frame the book in reference to Wordsworth, which I don't think always works. But the choice to reflect on her own childhood as well as Benj's (and later that of her other son James) in this way really brings her to the page as a very intelligent, curious and creative woman. One of the things that moves this book beyond a parenting book, though it is surely that, is that it raises so many questions about how children with special needs, learning disabilities, and chronic medical conditions are educated. You can't walk away from this book without wondering how children like Benj fare when they do not have access to all the resources available to Gilman from Yale, Vassar, and a supportive family. I don't say this to diminish the struggles and accomplishments of Benj and his family. But the amount of work--and it is clearly a labor of love--Gilman does with her son--singing, writing stories, writing nightly sentences, role-playing difficult situations with him, finding the best doctors, the best schools, etc.--is a full-time commitment. And when Gilman writes of Benj's father, who has traces of Benj's condition, it is hard not to wonder what happens to Benj as an adult, when he is no longer an adorable little boy. Again, this is where it is not just about parenting. It is a book about how we live in the world with people who can't function easily in it without a lot of support and assistance. Too often, I fear that we don't live in the world with them because we can choose not to be inclusive. Gilman shows us that it is our loss when we make that choice or when institutions make it for us.

[Jenni · Rating 5 out of 5]

I won this book as part of Goodreads giveaways. What prompted me to enter the contest in the first place was the book seemed to be a story of hope and joy in the midst of "failings" and unexpected events. I was not disappointed. I became engrossed in Priscilla Gilman's story about her life and her relationship with her son, Benj. I love how her story talks of how to find the joy in what the world may label as "different", "special, or "disabled". To see the whole of a person and all that they bring to your life instead of relying solely on labels and diagnosis.

It's a beautiful story of how she came to terms with having a hyperlexic child and the struggles and triumphs of working with her son. I saw so much love in her descriptions of the games and stories she wrote for Benj as well as the countless hours searching for just the right school plus the numerous daily emails to teachers. All was done to simply to help Benj cope with new experiences and grow to be the best he can be. It’s also a story of how she gained a new understanding of herself and a new perspective on what is truly valuable. We all have labels we assign to ourselves and others, and her story encourages us to look beyond these expectations and be true to ourselves.

I highly recommend this book to anyone grappling with "failing" or coming to terms with realities that were not what you originally expected. This book teaches that sometimes you can find more joy and more sense of self through these experiences than you could ever have imagined.

[Todd Kashdan]

This is a profoundly moving book where the beauty, pleasures, pain, and uncertainty of parenting is laid naked for the reader. None of us received an instruction manual on how to parent. And if we did, most of it would be non-applicable to the unique characters we're raising. This story captures the tension of raising a precocious child with special needs. How do you honor their strengths and uniqueness while simultaneously trying to get them to fit into a society that values normalcy and obedience?



I give the author credit for describing in explicit detail the self-doubt and pain in her academic life, marriage, and parenting. I give the author credit for doing everything in her power to raise an autonomous, competent child who knows that with every adventure and challenge there will be a safe haven awaiting them on demand.



What separates this memoir from any other is the use of perfectly placed poetry excerpts to capture what the author is experiencing, being, or doing. Read this book and you will have a renewed appreciation of what mothers sacrifice and why we should all be grateful on this and every other mother's day. The renewed appreciation of the power of poetry is a bonus.



well done.



cheers,

Todd

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's hard to explain why this book set my teeth on edge but it did. Lucky her for digging her way out while the rest of us slog in the trenches. I know it's not because she loves Wordsworth. I do too. Maybe it's because she's so super awesome and she lives in New York City. That's probably it. Anyway the first half of this book I alternately spent yelling at her to get that child evaluated (though I understand why she didn't) and stop talking about that ridiculous ideal childhood. Who has one of those? No one. That's why they call it "romantic": because it doesn't exist. The second half I liked much better. Hyperlexia is not well supported, I agree, and she has obviously put an astonishing amount of effort into B. Still -- teeth on edge.

[Ted Morgan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this elegant and nuanced memoir that transcends memoir and is fine literature. It is the one essential work from the past two years on my list of works to share and recommend.

Life does not always follow our fantasies but properly apperceived remains open to joy, mystery, and discovery.

[Jojo · Rating 5 out of 5]

As an English teacher, I tell my students that myths, poetry and stories are writers' attempts to make sense of things that seem beyond explanation. As the mother of a now-grown, very successful son who was in special ed through his public school years, I have seen all kinds of parents struggle with all kinds of special needs kids. A lot of times, the smartest, most privileged parents had the hardest time accepting a kid who just wasn't quite...typical. The author, who is a Wordsworth scholar, makes sense of her son's hyperlexia by weaving the story of his infancy and childhood together with the poetry she loves best. And it works. It works perfectly. Because, although he's on the autism spectrum, Benj, a thoroughly engaging kid, is extremely verbal---in fact, poems and songs are the means he uses to navigate the world. He connects with words the way most children connect with people. His parents don't even really notice that anything is wrong at first--- Benj seems so advanced, and he's their first child, so they have nothing to compare.

The book shows clearly and touchingly how Benj's parents figure out how to help him.

The learning process for parents can be tough when they learn that their child has a "label"---it's a journey, and there is no road map because every kid is different. Priscilla Gilman does an outstanding job of showing how, together with professionals and a loving extended family, she is able to raise her child in a way that works with his strengths but also helps him find a place in the world.

I would recommend this book to parents, obviously, but I've also recommended it to my students who are planning to teach young children. I loved it.

[Kelly Sapp · Rating 3 out of 5]

The literature quotes are fabulous in this story, and the author's love of literature, and the journey of discovering not only that her son has some "spectrumy traits," but that her husband did, too.

This story saddened me, because it seems to me, her husband (now, ex) went through PTSD and numbed upon learning about their son's diagnosis, while the author, of course, reacted to her PTSD with a hyper-vigilance. Their marriage did not survive, and that, to me, is the greatest tragedy of this story, and that of most families of a child with autism. Parents deal with a tremendous amount of guilt (was it MY genes that caused this?), and have very little time to nurture themselves or their marriage.

We, as a society, need to do better at, first of all, valuing children, and supporting all young families, and second at valuing persons of all abilities, and providing great, great support for those fragile families. They are under an invisible strain that few understand.

Joni & Friends has a special week-long camp where such families can go once per year. Their child is nurtured 1:1 by a specifically chosen caregiver, while the parents can spend time alone together. This camp is free. Just google Joni & Friends & you will find it.

[Zibby Owens · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book is mostly about coping with and raising a child, Benji. Benji had many special needs, including hyperlexia sensory disorder, fine motor/gross motor delays, and was on the spectrum. The author uses images and quotations from romantic poetry that describe playful, imaginative, spontaneous, and affectionate children (who are often snuggling and playing). She realized that Benji was the opposite of those other children.

The author said, “Parenting Benj, a child very different from the one I’d imagined having, has impressed upon me just how important it is to move beyond normative expectations about what our children will or won't be, should or shouldn't do.” The author stress to parents that there's nothing wrong with being autistic or on the spectrum. There's nothing to fear in that label. With autism comes a host of incredible strengths. It's important to help other families support their kids and for those special kids to own their identity. The book is an act of advocacy for him and others like him.

To listen to an interview with the author, go to my podcast at:

[Patricia · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting memoir about a young woman with an idyllic childhood spent imaging stories and games with her younger sister and father and dreaming of her own future family. She imagines that will be an English professor married to another English professor. They will have a home near campus and raise five perfect children who will inherit their talents. Some of this come true until the first child arrives. He is brilliant but cold, reads early, and understands little. The family’s life turns upside down and inside out. This special needs child requires all of the parent’s time and energy. For the mother, the only balance she feels is within the poems of her favorite poets especially Wordsworth. Even though her life style is far different from any of my friends and acquaintances, I could feel her anguish and finally her joy in his accomplishments.

Reading and enjoying the poems was an unexpected gift.

[Kathy Schlueter · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had high hopes for this book since I am a parent of a special needs child. While I could recognize some of my own child's issues in the author's descriptions, the author struck me as a whiner and a braggart about her own accomplishments. The tone seemed to be one of dismay that her son is not as "perfect"as she is, and now, how can she deal with all her academic friends in light of her son? At times it was a struggle to finish between my eye rolling and wanting to throw the book across the room.

[Lizzie · Rating 2 out of 5]

This woman is in denial that her child is autistic! Holy Wordsworth overkill just tell the story.

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

very compelling.

[Kim Wombles · Rating 5 out of 5]

In my American Literature course this semester, I worked to weave Joseph Campbell’s vision of the purpose of mythology throughout the pieces we read, to get students to consider the role that literature, in its many mediums, plays in providing the bedrock on which we live our lives and derive meaning. In a world in which religion no longer dominate our culture and for many people no longer lives and breathes, providing the answers for all life’s mysteries and meanings, the stories we listen to, watch, or read often become the essential framework on which we hang our own life narratives. Even when we maintain a religious belief structure, it is often not the dominant feature of our lives, and the stories we enjoy are often much more immediate and relevant.

This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is a scattering thing, one that further fragments our society as we rarely have the same tastes and experiences any more, but it is also a left-hand pathway of being, in which we are all free to find our own ways to be, our own meanings, and our own band of merry travelers to move along with.

One band of travelers I choose to be on this journey with is other special needs families. There is a commonality of experience that often, especially if you segment yourself even further into a particular faction, provides instant bonding and acceptance. It also provides an already established framework to build one’s narrative upon.

In the online autism world, the most obvious division is between the neurodiversity advocates and the curebies (for whom I am subsuming the biomed, anti-vaccine, alternative medicine advocates). This dichotomy provides a wonderful framework for whichever side one chooses. Both cast themselves as the white hats with the other side as the black hats. It’s a heady, winning cocktail: instant conflict and the chance to consider oneself as the white knight fighting against impossible odds in the name of one’s child or one’s self, whichever way it goes. It’s an interest cultural experience to watch play out, to say the least, and an even more interesting one to be a part of, to be both observer and participant. Very rarely do folks cross party lines, and true friendships between folks across the divides, especially on the extreme sides, are rare. Look at the advantages, though: instant membership, rules, support, and an enemy to fight. It’s not at all a surprise, I think, to see these divides occur, especially in a population that already tends towards dichotomous thinking.

Not all families online participate in this division, and there is a large (although perhaps less visible) contingent that is focused on supporting others without requiring allegiance and in helping their children and themselves function to their best ability. It’s a lovely community to be a part of, and it encompasses autistic individuals and families both. In this community, when there’s a difference of opinion on causation or treatment, there’s less acrimony because that position isn’t the dominating factor. Folks are focused on different things. They have a different mythology, so to speak.

The tapestry we weave for our lives’ journeys is dependent on the stories we choose to listen to, make ourselves open to. The literature we read, the movies we watch, the music we listen to weave together to provide a foundation upon which to judge our own experiences and the appropriate reactions. Priscilla Gilman in her luminous The Anti-Romantic Child: A Story of Unexpected Joy provides a compelling and emotionally riveting narrative of her journey into the world of being a special needs parent.

Gilman begins with her foundation; she takes us through her childhood and the importance of literature, of creativity, of the written and spoken word, in her life as a child. She moves us through her college education and the complete undergirding of her life with Wordsworth as bedrock upon which to base herself. She shares her courtship with her now ex-husband, and how his differences from others drew her to him, how his shared love of literature became their bedrock. Wordsworth, in his immortal poetry, provides guidance for each step of her personal life, and even when (perhaps especially when) his idealism of marriage, motherhood and childhood are far from her reality, Gilman finds solace and purpose in relating his poems to where she is in her life.

One cannot live by Wordsworth alone, though, and the music that provides comfort and energy also permeates her memoir; her tremendous love for music and literature are things she works assiduously to share with her oldest son who shows himself to be different, precocious, hypersensitive, and uniquely himself, all while hearkening back to traits he shares in common with his parents. Readers who’ve been on this journey to discovering that their wonderful, unique children are so different from the norm, need so much help as to render them “disordered” and “disabled” and in need of a label, may recognize themselves and some of their own journey here. My husband and I, parents to three children who are on very different places on the spectrum, can see where our issues and distinctive traits manifest in our children, and even more so, where they are magnified and create problems that require more effort and innovation.

Not all parents are fortunate enough to see and appreciate that reflection; sometimes the differences are so great, the loss so deep, that answers are required outside of ourselves and our genetics and the environments we create around our children. While Gilman seems to have been spared the need to look at outside blame, I think she fundamentally understands what most parents go through on the way to accepting the reality of a disabled child; Gilman writes, “To question your grasp of your child is to suffer a great loss.” Some parents are able to reconcile this loss, find a way around it to the other side, to the “unexpected joy.”

While much of her son’s life relayed in this story is more from the perspective of how her husband and she navigated how to best help him, the last part of the book turns to her son and the strides and progress he makes; it becomes less about her journey and more about their journey together, as it should be for all parents and children. As our children grow, they become more active participants in our relationships with them, and reading about the blooming of her oldest son, his relationship with his brother, parents, and the community they help him build for himself, is truly a joy to read.

My copy of Gilman’s book is dog-eared; there are so many places where she wrote something that really touched me, either with its timeless truth or the beauty of its prose so that I had to mark it (and force myself not to scribble in the margins). She weaves the poetry of Wordsworth and other greats throughout the book, making it not just a memoir about her finding her path and helping her son with his, but an ode to the muses, as well, a clarion call for other parents to make their own bedrock upon which to stand. We could all use a more defined mythology to build our lives on, one that lives and breathes and moves within us, coursing through our veins and beating in tandem to our hearts. Upon such bedrock, we cannot despair and will never be lost.

Also posted this review at http://www.science20.com/countering_t...

[Anita W · Rating 5 out of 5]

THE ANTI-ROMANTIC CHILD – A Memoir of Unexpected Joy written by Dr. Priscilla A. Gilman
I am greatly humbled by this book -- but also inspired and filled with hope. This book exposes raw nerves as we read about the real life of Dr. Priscilla A. Gilman and her son, Benjamin. The occasional poetry interspersed throughout the book beautifully dramatizes and illustrates the story. The book is about a parent’s worst fears – that their child may be born less than physically and mentally perfect by society’s standards -- and the triumph of hope and love over disease.
Benjamin, the young child in the story, does not fit the world’s standard of “normal.” He is both brilliant and delayed. His mother Priscilla’s dream of the perfect childhood for her son is shattered at the outset. She, her husband, and their family struggle to have a structured and calm existence in a world where chaos is rampart, and “normalcy” applies only to other families.
As you read this endearing story, you will live Dr. Gilman’s struggle to determine where and how Benjamin (“Benj”) will or will not be able to fit into daily life at school and in relationships with his family and classmates. Priscilla reveals her intellect and her heart as she shares her life with Benj and allows us to glimpse into moments of deep despair and failure, only to later be amazed and awed by Benjamin’s progress. A look into a “different” child’s life allows us to visit the moment-to-moment struggle that Benj and his family dealt with and still deal with on the most basic of levels. I fully believe that every person, and especially parents with children of any age, should read this manuscript. It would help each of us understand how we may need to rethink our priorities and to refocus on what is really important.
Benj’s grasp of this world is so delicate and fragile -- yet so confident and self-assured – that it will both tear your heart apart and fill it with love. It is a rare privilege to be allowed to experience, step-by-step, human triumphs and setbacks as they occur. You are drawn fully into Benj’s world and how his parents deal with his learning differences.
You are privy to the family’s utmost secret thoughts and actions. Priscilla gives you the opportunity to walk in her shoes and to see the world through Benj’s eyes. With this newfound insight, you gain respect for Benj’s accomplishments, along with those of his parents, his cadre of doctors, his therapists, and his teachers, all of whom grow to cherish Benj’s approach to life.
A small child who reads exceptionally early is welcomed into our society. As parents, we beam with pride while others with children who aren’t succeeding as quickly may silently sulk with jealousy. Never would we have guessed that this ability, this unexpected “brilliance,” could actually be a flashing warning sign highlighting a serious problem. Perhaps it was a mother’s intuition, but somehow Priscilla knew that something was not right. Although she tried repeatedly to get her doctor and her family to share her worries, they wrote them off to a young mom’s overly-protective nature.
Priscilla’s writing is superb, but her technique at showing us what we need to see is downright amazing. You will find yourself engrossed in Benj’s real life episodes. You won’t be able to step away easily, either. After you read the last page, you’ll find that you are changed forever, and for the better, because you’ve experienced through different eyes the make-up of our world. You will carry this family’s everyday experiences with you, and I’m betting that the next time you meet or come across a child that acts differently than you expect, you’ll reconsider your opinion of that child too. Given any heart at all, after reading this book, how could you not?
As a parent of four, I am amazed at how Priscilla was able to juggle her professional life at Yale and Vassar with her very structured family life. Having worked professionally as a teacher and an associate principal, with long and uncertain hours and unexpected delays daily, I am baffled at how she managed to conduct such a structured and calm household. But she obviously succeeds, as Benj’s progress and accomplishments prove.
Priscilla uses her love of Wordsworth to catapult us into poetry that beautifully describes the obvious in lyrical tones. Here such a “refined” approach is welcome, as instead of boring us or slowing the reading, it enhances and charms you with its rhythm and vitality. Just as rhythm and words charm Benj with his music, we are touched by Wordsworth’s allusions and impressions of a child.
This book moved me to laugh for joy, to cry about the harsh impact of reality, and to be jubilant about Benj’s new accomplishments. Reading “too early” in Benj’s case was a curse not related to actual brilliance, because he was merely echoing words instead of having original thoughts. Because he was able to read, however, he could be reassured by carrying typewritten cards that told him what to do in various situations. So words become the “sheep in wolves clothing” for Benj, as they both establish his seemingly impossible diagnosis, but also allow him to deal with it.
Think about if faced with a similar situation, you could learn from Priscilla and be able to cope with her immense struggle as methodically and lovingly as she did. She was never pushed harder than she could handle. Even as she hid her fatigue behind closed doors with the water running, she persevered. Out of necessity, she always kept a calm, cool head when she was with Benj, always attempting to help him adjust to the world around him.
This book forces you to be aware of what can happen when you bring a child into the world -- a child that might not fit in anywhere, unless someone acts as their advocate at all times. You will find out if Priscilla’s striving brings relief to this precious family, or even more strife, and only you will be able to decide whether or not the struggle would be worth it for you.
I hope that I’ve shared enough with you to have peaked your curiosity about this child and this extremely rare book. I believe you will cherish the moments that you spend getting to know this family, and that you will experience how Benj’s life forever changed his family’s outlook, and can change yours as well.
Without a doubt, I give this book “5 tiaras.” It will be worth every breath you take as you read it, and the amount of time you share with Benj will be invaluable to your understanding not only of special children, but of all children. It isn’t just a book for academics; it is a book that teaches us to care more, and to apply constructively what we learn in life. I hope that you choose to embrace the possibilities. Happy reading and loving!

[Nicole Arocho · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘My father reassured me that it was all right not to know, to remain in a state of awe and mystery. He gave what could’ve been a nightmare “the glory and freshness of a dream.”’

Priscilla Gilman wrote The Anti-Romatic Child: A Story of Unexpected Joy with a thousand sentences just like these two. Because of the personal level of her writing, her emotions flourish throughout the whole book. She delights the reader’s eyes with beautiful sentences decorated with quotes from her favorite poet, William Wordsworth, and her use of imagery aids her to describe so passionately each one of her crossroads. The reader cannot help but feel her tumult of sentiments as if their own. The story of a girl who grew up with divorced parents and dreamt of having a perfect family that turned out to be anything but that, but turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to her may sound like a cliché plotline, but Gilman takes the reader into a world full of unmet expectations, disappointments and difficulties with love and hope bursting through each of her words.

Gilman bluntly states at the beginning of the book that “[it] is a love story”, and a tragic one indeed. As her hyperlexic child, Benjamin, is diagnosed and his treatments became the center of her life, her emotions become so real, so bluntly told on the page, that sometimes it made me uncomfortable to keep reading, because her heart and soul were in the page. I felt I was invading her privacy somehow; no smokescreen, no façade to hide her deepest fears, tribulations and quests for answers that she never seemed to grasp fully. Her dedication to her child goes above and beyond anything else, including her career and her marriage. When the rest of her life plummeted, she still had her “Benj”, and thus could find the strength to keep going for him. She intertwines her marriage and family life with her academic life and her own thoughts splendidly with smooth transitions and wonderful insights the reader expects in a memoir, but that she takes to a new level that brings the reader so close to her, it feels as if we actually have met her and shared this stage of her life with her personally.

Gilman was an English professor at Yale University; she taught 19th century literature, which deals with Romanticism. This cultural movement started in the late 18th century and lasted till mid-19th century. It was a reaction to Classicism, a 18th century movement that established reason, logic and the objective above anything else. Thus, Romanticism’s ideology was based in the emotions, feelings and the subjective in a variety of fields, including literature. Gilman’s writing is heavily influenced by Romanticism (Wordsworth was one of the big names of the movement) and departs tremendously from the usual “bad writing” writing she had to do as a professor: ‘[Academic writing] was infected with trendiness and political correctness of the worst kinds. I didn’t like having to engage in the contemporary critical debates, which I fin largely irrelevant or irritating, and I didn’t like the relentless pressure to publish publish publish on the “hot” topics.’

Her sentences are long and poetic, with a truly Romantic tinge to them, her preference for Romanticism-era poets clearly influencing her writing: “This book began as a lump in the throat, as a homesickness for the magical world of my childhood and for the home life I was looking forward to with my child. It began with a sickness of love for a child I adored but did not understand, a love searing in its intensity, overwhelming in its sense of longing and vulnerability, a love I feared would never be reciprocated, and worst of all would never make an impact. It began with the pinning of contact with the spirit or essence of my child, a wrenching fear that perhaps everything I did and said was in vain because he was unreachable and unimpressionable, a fierce devotion to a child I would do anything to save.” Her repetitive sentence style caught my attention right away with this excerpt at the beginning of the memoir. As a poetic person myself, I too sometimes concede a poetry style in my prose, and lengthy sentences just like Gilman’s come across in my stories. But after reading halfway through the book, her style became a bit predictable, and in some instances I wished that the author had not followed that pattern throughout the whole book. In some occasions, I wished Gilman had expressed her feelings in one short sentence. For I truly believe that it is good to let the reader explore the true feelings of the character, in this case the author, and not tell them every single bit of it. This is non-fiction, but it is also creative non-fiction, and the subject is a character that is a part of who the author was or is.

This memoir is written in such a way that you can’t stop wondering how her life is going to unravel in the next page. The reader is so enthralled that when they suddenly blink and come back to reality, they feel like they need a break from the emotional rollercoaster the author is riding them on.
In the end, she realizes her dream of a perfect life did become true, but not the way she had intended it to. “In parenting Benj, I have gotten more in touch with a profound kind of romanticism; I have been given access to a transcendent sense of mystery and awe and wonder.” This period of her life was, indeed, a “story of unexpected joy” I was delighted to read, and I am sure others will love it as well.

[Lauren · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ms. Gilman,
Thank you for these heart-wrenching, delicious, loving words about mothering both of your sons, and how you worked to make your family life adaptable and successful for your children. Your resilience, clarity and devotion as Mother are so striking.

I’ve read each of your books, and find them so personal, warm, affectionate, and embracing of loved ones, regardless of how challenging that can be when we acknowledge the challenges loved ones bring.

Maybe I’m biased? I’ve kept a copy of Intimations of Immortality on person for years. I keep it near, hearing my Father’s voice as he recited it over dinner.

Your writing helped me enjoy Wordsworth in new ways, with which I grew a deep admiration for you and your family story. Thank you for sharing it.

[Alfred Haplo · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is not a parenting-help book, nor a call for empathy. This is not even a book about the author’s special needs son, who precipitated the notion of the anti-romantic child. This is first and foremost, a memoir of the author, Priscilla Gilman, who shared her personal journey of finding unexpected joy. Through Ms. Gilman’s unique perspective of prose and poetry, we learn what it was like for her to expect an ordinary developing child but found the extraordinary, to lose a college sweetheart but gained a soulmate and to find in Wordsworth the words to live.

Gillman was a Wordsworth scholar and Yale professor whose early life looked charmed and privileged by the standards of most Americans. Hers was a childhood passionately immersed in literature, which was largely influenced by parents well-known within New York’s drama and literary social circles. She married a fellow academic and had a beautiful boy, Benj, short for Benjamin (or “Ben-j” as she pronounces his nickname). Life was supposed to be perfect and romantic.

Benj had hyperplexia * (and was later diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder). He had failed to meet developmental milestones and was exhibiting atypical behaviors as early as age 2. Benj abhorred physical affection, exhibited echolalia, could not interact socially, was unusually rigid with routines and was “hyper-reading”, among many observations. Benj read voraciously, and re-read the same books voraciously for self-stimulation and self-soothing. He was able to decode and recite works of poetry by rote but could not understand both the meaning and the emotional undercurrents of what he read. Benj’s behaviors, therapies, schooling and other special needs in the ensuing years took a toll on the author’s marriage which ended in divorce and on her career in academia which was eventually sacrificed. In those painful years, Gillman turned constantly to Wordsworth and occasionally to Frost, EE Cummings, Yeats and other poets to seek solace and inspiration.

She found that, and more. She found the unexpected joy of a deeper connection with Benj, and a redefining of her own identity as a mother and person, and later as wife again. Benj made significant progress and was found to be extraordinarily gifted in music. He too discovered rhythm and poetry first by writing simple haikus then poems, some of which are quoted in the book, and eventually enrolled in Juilliard for classical guitar. Gillman’s joy and hope, in essence, is captured in this excerpt from Tintern Abbey By William Wordsworth,

”While here I stand, not only with the sense
Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts
That in this moment there is life and food
For future years. And so I dare to hope,
Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when first
I came among these hills”

As mentioned, this is a memoir of one person’s journey. It is not the same journey taken by another parent with a special needs child. Children on the autism spectrum are individually unique in behaviors and needs. So too, are their parents in how they respond to and cope with their own unique emotional needs. Gillman's background and manner of expression may be alienating to some readers but all that, too, is just part of who she is uniquely.

In reading this memoir, I applaud the spirit of the book and the universal hope it conveys. Ms. Gilman's romantic idea of her son was shattered by his disability. Instead of giving up and checking out, which often happen in stressful family situations, she picked up the pieces and with Benj’s help, found a different kind of romance.

In her words, “In parenting Benj, I have gotten more in touch with a profound kind of romanticism; I have been given access to a transcendent sense of mystery and awe and wonder”. In Wordsworth’s words at the end of the book,

"For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still sad music of humanity,
… And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused…"

Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798.

This was a borrowed book from the shelf of a close relative, who had met the author at a book signing last summer. The title page has these words autographed on it

- “To X (relative’s name) and Y (relative’s 9 yr old son with autism).

In solidarity, Priscilla and Benj.”


[* unverified, for reference only.]

[Lara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Original review here

I remember being pregnant with Bria, my first child, and having all kinds of notions about how it was going to be to have my own baby. I wondered what she would be like: I hoped she would have my love of reading and learning and her father's musical abilities. I wanted her to be brilliant, of course, and kind and sweet and wonderful and perfect.

Of course she is all of those things--just not quite how I had imagined it. She loves to read and learn all right, but it surprises me that she chooses to read fantasy books (not my favorite genre) over Nancy Drew. And it really surprises me that she has an obsessive interest in spiders, reptiles, amphibians and other creepy crawlies. Whenever we go to the library, she always comes home with at least one book about tarantulas or lizards or something. Not quite what I expected my daughter to want to learn about! I had hoped she would love school, but she doesn't really. She does indeed have her father's musical abilities, but she really hates to perform in front of people. But she is brilliant in her own way, and kind and sweet and wonderful and perfect.

And all mine.

It's just she isn't really mine, because she is 100% her own person. And as her mother, I have had to learn to understand that person. It's a journey and a process and can be incredibly frustrating and incredibly joyful.

And it's a journey that all mothers take, though some mothers have to alter their expectations much more drastically than others.

Such was the case with Priscilla Gilman, a literature professor at Yale who specializes in Wordsworth. Pregnant with her first child, and having had a wonderfully imaginative and rich childhood of her own, she had all kinds of romantic aspirations for her unborn baby, just as most mothers do. Except, when Benj was born, he didn't turn out to be anything like what Priscilla and her husband expected.

As time passed, they discovered he had something called hyperlexia, which is the opposite of dyslexia. This book is a lovely memoir of Priscilla's journey through Benj's childhood. Advocating, understanding, weeping, rejoicing--and always keeping the words of Wordsworth close by as her personal touchstone.

Other than a few of his poems, I am not super familiar with Wordsworth (let's face it, unless I've sung a setting of a poem, I probably am not familiar with it at all, but after reading this book I am very interested to find settings of Wordsworth to sing), but I absolutely loved Gilman's sprinkling of his verses throughout the memoir. They were always poignant and perfectly mirrored the emotions and experiences she was having at that point in her journey.

I must say, I absolutely loved this book. An author who understands the beauty of the English language draws me in every time, and Gilman most certainly has that gift. She weaves a beautiful tale of unrealized expectations and finding joy in the unexpected. While I don't have a child that has special needs per se, I could easily relate with so much of her experience. In other words, you don't need to have a child with special needs in order to love this book, I think there is something in it for everyone.

I respect Priscilla Gilman a great deal for the way she strives not to label her son, and to accept him for exactly who he is and what he brings to her life. I struggle with the labels we are so anxious to slap on our children. Autistic, ADD, gifted, etc. While I certainly appreciate the ways the label allows for needed interventions, I worry that it puts the child into a tidy little box and we forget that there is much more to her than that label. I loved Priscilla's attitude about this--that though Benj may be on the spectrum, she has not tested him to be sure. She knows his quirks and his needs and she advocates for him as a whole person. It made me want to get to know my own children better, as it seemed to me Priscilla has dedicated her life to knowing and understanding Benj and his younger brother.

I am recommending this book to my book club next week when we meet to choose books for the year. I really hope the other ladies will vote it in, it is definitely one of the most lovely books I've read in a while.

(PS My book club ladies voted it in! Of our group of about 10 women, we have a speech therapist, a special ed teacher, a mom with an autistic son and a mom with a son who has sensory issues. I think we will have a very good discussion when we read it in February.)

[Sherri Byrand · Rating 5 out of 5]

My deep appreciation for Priscilla Gilman’s book The Unromantic Child is two-pronged. First, without sap or spite, Gilman reveals her journey of enlightenment as a mother, for how she aligned herself with her son’s needs and gifts, reconciling to reality.

From that last sentence above it is too easy to think that this is a book just for the parents of children with special needs. Of course, it shares a perspective that they should find helpful. It certainly reached out to me, as I have a son who reflects Benj’s diagnoses except for the hyperlexia. Like Benj, my son “clearly has shades of obsessive-compulsive disorder, … sensory-integration disorder and social-pragmatic language disorder” and is said to have mild Asperger’s. A Rule Boy with tics and quirks, he is nonetheless a very different child from Benj. For one, music is not a solace for him, though writing and drawing are. The differences between our two sons serve as great testimony for Gilman’s plea – that we “appreciate[e] the complex, intricate person” each child is, beyond labels.

And while that is an intrinsic message that we should all follow (and one that we would all benefit from), I also want to discuss another element of this book that deserves attention from a wide readership. That is Gilman’s journey through the works of Wordsworth, offering his poetry in the context of her life before Benj and since.

I hadn’t pondered on Wordsworth until five years ago, when I wandered through his Dove Cottage—not “lonely as a cloud,” but with my then seven-year-old son alongside. Up to then, my connection to the Lake District had been through The Plague Dogs by Richard Adams and Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome. Then I picked up a dog-eared copy of The Illustrated Lake Poets at a second-hand shop in Grasmere and from there, we experienced the landscape through Wordsworth’s poetry. Shielded by our Gore-Tex from “flying showers,” we “rove[d] [t]hro’ bare grey dell, high wood, and pastoral cove … [t]hro’ craggs, and forest glooms, and opening lakes … to willowy hedgerows, and to emerald meads …” and through it all, I found “the sense [o]f majesty, and beauty, and repose, [a] blended holiness of earth and sky …”

And in our roving, I gained a profound appreciation not only for how Wordsworth captured that landscape with verse, but also for how his very writing helped to galvanize others into safeguarding the Lake District so that we also, nearly two hundred years later, could be “Wild Wanderers”—not only seeing firsthand the world that was once his, but also discovering the real reason why we should wander there: simply to “Be happy.”

I thought I knew Wordsworth, but then I read Gilman’s book. Compared to her encounters with him, mine feels pragmatic. Not hollow, but shallow. Wordsworth’s poetry did not launch my emotions—no, it was the landscape itself that sent them soaring. Rather, his words helped me latch more firmly to my feelings, to name them, frame them. So as I embraced the landscape, I echoed Wordsworth. I wasn’t breathing in the poetry and letting it burn through my heart, whereas it is clear that Gilman has done just that.

So, those who appreciate Wordsworth, good poetry, the hold that poetry can take on a soul (or the help that it offers for fathoming the profound) should also read this book.

In her use of Wordsworth to show how she came to commit herself to the “battle for Benj’s essential self,” Gilman provides not only specifics that can help parents fight for their own child’s “essential self,” but can help all readers reflect on their own.

[Christine Bourgeois · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was a Thursday and I was heading to the midtown branch of the New York Public Library. A few weeks earlier, an excerpt in the Library’s monthly publication advertised Priscilla Gilman’s book reading. The words “children” and “unexpected joy” had caught my attention. That evening the author’s talk moved something deep inside me. I bought a copy of her book and spent the next few days consumed by it.

Priscilla Gilman, a Wordsworth scholar and a young mother, is just starting her career as an English Professor at Yale. But as her firstborn Benjamin grows up and his precociousness reveals itself to be symptomatic of a developmental disorder, she is faced with a reality very different from her dreams and expectations. This book chronicles the author’s journey as a mother as she continuously revises her understanding of her son and his disorder. She talks of the initial pride over Benj’s precociousness, followed by the realization of his difficulties with “cognitive flexibility”. She gradually faces and accepts several diagnosis of developmental disorder, only to be faced with close relatives’ and even her pediatrician’s denial of that same diagnosis. But most of all her understanding of her son is turned upside down: “In those first days of questioning who my son was and what he would or could be, I had trouble finding strength because I wasn’t sure what remained behind”. She starts to work tirelessly to understand him and give him what he needs: “in the last month, I’ve realized in a way I never had before that this is and will be my life – this day –to-day work on and for and with Benj.” Her unfailing dedication to her son, and her daily determination to search for new solutions is touching and formidable.

The author’s love of poetry is omnipresent in the book and beautiful citations by Wordsworth accompany the entire narrative. Her understanding of his poetry reaches new depths, just as her love for her son reaches new depths. As the romantic and unrealistic notions of childhood are revealed and lost, “unexpected joys” bring new meaning. One day Benj asks his mother an extraordinary question about a dream he had. “Mommy how do you keep a good dream from leaving” a very unexpected question coming from Benj:

“…And in helping Benj learn how to hold on to Wordsworth’s “celestial light…the glory and the freshness of a dream”, I recovered my dream of a child capable of dreaminess, strong feeling, intense appreciation of beauty and wonder. Benj was beginning to access a little of the wonder of my childhood perspective, and in mothering him, I was discovering a whole new kind of wonder, a whole new sense of what wonder could be. “

This book transcends the sometimes rigid therapeutic approach to developmental disorders and instead is an intensely authentic, human and poetic account of motherhood. It is a beautifully written memoir of loss and redemption, love and beauty will touch all parents who question their own expectations for their children and families.

[Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

My response to The Anti-Romantic Child: A Story of Unexpected Joy by Priscilla Gilman was so strong and so personal I doubt if I can write a reasonable review.

What I can say is the Gilman writes beautifully, she presents relationships, familial and romantically, with clarity while retaining the complexity of those relationships and of the individuals involved. She is never dismissive nor does she take the route of easy judgments.

I was fascinated by her childhood (I too grew up on Manhattan's Upper West Side, but in a very different world, nonetheless; however, my mother's ability to create magical moments were brought back to me by Gilman's descriptions of her father's gifts). And the pain of the paradise lost experienced when her parents' marriage cracked open, her need to comfort the vulnerable parent, her own love affair with literature and struggle (emotionally-intellectually she was clearly more than able to hold her own) in the sometimes emotionally sterile world of high-stakes academia, her love affair with the man she married-all were mesmerizing, a combination of fairy tale and reality.

And I love how Gilman weaves her favorite poet (Wordsworth's) work into her narrative. I chuckled when she became a parent: as every parent knows, so much of parenting is non-Wordsworthian. Children, even babies, are so stubbornly themselves and they so rarely fit our fantasy.

But with Gilman's first child, as with my second, the gap between fantasy and reality is even greater. And most painful (unless this is my projection/identification) is that the ways in which her baby is special and valuable and wonderful are also the ways in which he is "disordered," "special" (a word my own son uses only with heavy sarcasm) in a negative way, a "problem," and, worst of all, perhaps nothing but a set of diagnostic criteria, all of which adding up, not to the child you love and wonder at but to a "label," a problem to be solved.

The book brought back the feelings of despair I knew at times that I don't even want to remember. But it also brings in the very special joy that no one who has not lived it can understand. When everything "ordinary" is a struggle, a mother's life can be so painful. All a mother wants is her child's happiness. And to believe her child has a future that will be satisfying to him. When that is in question, it's like living as an open wound.

But every triumph is unbelievably sweet. To see a "fragile" child gain resilience is to become stronger oneself; to see him blossom is to know that miracles exist. This book shows how love is a miracle that is never old. Gilman doesn't so much illuminate Wordsworth's poetry as connect his words to vivid life which then lights up the poems.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading THE ANTI-ROMANTIC CHILD was a dual-toned experience: on the one hand, it is utterly relatable, but on the other its scholarly approach can feel detached and distancing. Overall, I enjoyed it, as much for its differences from other books in the genre as for its similarities.

The story deals with Priscilla Gilman's life with her son, Benjamin, who over the course of the book is diagnosed with hyperlexia. Ms. Gilman also describes her early life before her son's birth; she recounts her personal and academic interest in Wordsworth and uses his poems to explain and highlight her own character, beliefs, and hopes for herself and her future children. This is the basis for "anti-romanticism": the son she is given is nothing like the child she was herself, or the child she expected to have. Coming to terms with Benj's considerable problems and the disconnect from her idealized life is a long, hard journey, and one the author describes honestly and with real feeling.

Where this book differs from other books about parenting special-needs children is in its scholarly tone. Poems are used as would evidence be in a research paper; they support her claims about herself and explain her disillusionment as her life unfolds. I work as a speech-language pathologist in the public schools, and few parents of those children would relate to Ms. Gilman's life of intellectual and creative privilege. It is difficult to mourn faded romantic dreams when your prime concern is putting food on the table. For those parents, I imagine this book would be at times unreadable.

Yet Ms. Gilman's love for her son, her fears for his future, her grief for what was, and her resolution for what has to be are all innately understandable to any parent, especially those with a child who struggles day to day with what others find naturally simple. Ms. Gilman hides little of her deep emotional turmoil and, eventually, her loving acceptance of her life and her child. This is the core of her story, and she offers it up completely.

ANTI-ROMANTIC deserves to be read with the weight with which it was written: to read the poetry and feel it as much as the more typically-presented prose. As a side note, support staff and teachers would also do well to read this book: in the era of IDEA and FAPE, it was amazing to me that so many professionals in Ms. Gilman's life were as dismissive, undiscerning, and, frankly, unhelpful as they were portrayed in this book. I had to remind myself that this was not written 30 years ago, but took place in the last decade. I don't believe Ms. Gilman exaggerated their encounters, either: her honesty and attention to detail preclude deception.

Which is, at heart, the strength of her work: she describes her dreams and describes their fall, and shows you how she builds them again, in word and deed.

[Jennifer Rayment · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Good Stuff

Beautifully writes about raising a child that has special needs and so wonderfully explains the need to let go of the dream of your child and love the child you have.
Very painfully honest and real, she doesn't hide from her emotions and doesn't put blame on anyone
Her relationship with her ex-husband is one that I truly believe benefits her children -- now if more divorces couples would follow her path
She's a strong women who wouldn't take no for an answer and wants the best for her child
Benji sounds like a truly remarkable and wonderful child and I enjoyed reading about him
Loves both of her sons and fights like a tiger for them
Full text of all the poems quoted at the back of the book
Very inspirational at times
The Not so Good Stuff

Way too scholarly and romantic for my non scholarly mind which I really think takes away from the lessons taught in the book. But please remember I am more of a plain spoken practical girl
Got irritated by the constant references to Wordsworth (yes I know that is the point of the book, but it really got on my nerves after a while)
I was having a tough time reading this and I couldn't put my finger on why I wasn't enjoying it. I think it has a lot to do with the fact, that I am also raising a special needs child and I think things hit a little too close to home and to some of the issues I am denying or avoiding
I found her a tad self absorbed at times
Favorite Quotes/Passages




"Anytime you get frustrated or irritated with him, try to remember how far he's come rather than how far you still want or need him to go. It helps. It helped us."










"That literature has the power to comfort and sustain might seem obvious, but as a professional scholar of literature, I had been made to feel that literature was there to be analyzed, debated or worked on, not to be turned to for consolation, solace or inspiration."




"My goal as a mother is to never stop fighting that battle for Benji's essential self and to teach him how to fight it on his own behalf."




What I Learned

That I really am not the biggest fan of poetry -- unless its The Highway Man or The Creamation of Sam McGee
Fascinating information about Hyperlexia
Who should/shouldn't read

Best for those who enjoy a more scholarly account of living with a special needs child
Would recommend it for anyone raising a child that has special needs because author does eloquently express the need to let go of the child you wanted and to love and accept the one you have
Obviously parents with children who have Hyperlexia will find tons of helpful and insightful information
3.5 Dewey's




I received this book from HarperCollins in exchange for an honest review