Autism Is Not a Life Sentence: How One Family Took on Autism And Won!

by Lynley Summers, Jessica Summers (Commentaries by), Stephen M. Shore (Foreword by)

Autism is Not a Life Sentence is about a mother-daughter team who worked together to build a life of fulfillment and success not by beating autism, but by working with it. It is the story of how author Lynley Summer s daughter, Jessica, descended into darkness from what appeared to be a normal infancy. The book chronicles how the author incorporated her background of chaos theory into behavioral modification therapy and used it successfully to systematically eliminate some of the characteristically autistic behaviors from Jessica s life. The reader will see Jessica, initially diagnosed as limited to a self-contained classroom and a helmet, grow into an accomplished high school student who composes music, writes stories and speaks at conferences about life with autism.

203 pages, Paperback

First published January 18, 2006

Reviews

[Mimi · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is hard to judge. It was a good book for her to write and testify her success but it's very confusing if this is the first book you read as a new parent of an autistic child. The really interesting part is that "Jazz" her daughter writes little afterwords after each chapter.

Her book was jumping all over the place. "she won't talk, which she later proved wrong when we lived in Japan and she learned to speak it fluently". And then she jumped back to a year where she refused to give her a drink until she said the word "juice" and you think...didn't she just learn Japanese? I could never follow her progress and improvements.

Very inspiring because she was a single parent with very little resources and time but the will of 3 men. I really admire her for her dedication and success in her daughter's life.

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

I know Jazz personally. She's one of the most awesome people I've ever known, and I never would have guessed she was autistic. I hadn't heard of this book until my grandmother gave it to me (she knew Lynley, but I never knew that either) after Jazz had graduated. It's a great read, even if you don't know anyone with autism. For me though, it was cool that I was getting to know one of my friends on a totally different level.