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Strange Son: Two Mothers, Two Sons, and the Quest to Unlock the Hidden World of Autism
The groundbreaking true story of two mothers, worlds apart, united in a struggle to connect with their autistic sons.
Emmy(r)-winning art director Portia Iversen's life was turned upside down when her son Dov was diagnosed with autism. But when she heard a miraculous story of a woman in India who had taught her own severely autistic son to communicate, she brought Soma and Tito Mukhopadhyay from Bangalore to America to help researchers better understand this amazing feat. Strange Son is the extraordinary account of two families who made astonishing discoveries about the nature of autism and redefined how the world can interact with those who suffer from the disorder.
Emmy(r)-winning art director Portia Iversen's life was turned upside down when her son Dov was diagnosed with autism. But when she heard a miraculous story of a woman in India who had taught her own severely autistic son to communicate, she brought Soma and Tito Mukhopadhyay from Bangalore to America to help researchers better understand this amazing feat. Strange Son is the extraordinary account of two families who made astonishing discoveries about the nature of autism and redefined how the world can interact with those who suffer from the disorder.
448 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2006
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June 10, 2014
This is a hard book to review. My review is VERY long. On the plus side, if you read the entire thing (much of which is quotes), you'll never have to read the book.
There is excellent information in here about the autistic experience and stunning insights into how the autistic mind works (much of it given by Tito and Soma, but a lot explained by Iverson herself)... But it must come with a strong warning.
The entire book is horribly marred by the narrow-minded intolerance with which the author approaches autism and autistic people. She is like a bird researcher who, discovering penguins, bemoans that they cannot fly and refuses to see that there is anything beautiful and valuable in them.
This book is compellingly written-- clear language, tidy narrative, good pacing. For that reason, too, I want to warn autism parents away, lest they get swept up and begin to sympathize with the dehumanizing viewpoint.
I'll go over the problems first, then the helpful stuff. Sensitive readers may want to skip straight to the "good" section.
*** THE BAD ***
I admit, I came to actually hate Portia Iverson as a person. To be fair, she starts at a disadvantage-- knowing almost nothing about autism, and all of it completely wrong. The doctor who diagnoses Dov advises her and her husband to "hold on to each other and cry. Get on with your lives" (p 11), and with appalling advice like that, I can see why she would assume autism to be a horrible thing... especially since the next "expert" she turns to is the infamous Lovaas. But her understanding never changes, in spite of all her experiences.
She opens the book by saying that autism "stole" her son's mind, despite her later discovery that his intelligence is at least normal, if not high, for his age. Chapter 1 starts: "There is a small group of people in this world to whom an event so devastating has occurred that they may even have stopped believing in God."
Yes, those people exist, and they are not a small group, either-- millions have lost homes and families, or suffered war, persecution, torture, starvation, the death of a child. That Iverson puts her well-to-do family in the same category because they have a son who isn't what they expected is sickening, pathetic, and hugely disrespectful not only to autistic people but also to anyone who has experienced genuine tragedy.
And by the end of the book, in spite of all the information she has gathered, all the insights, and the incredible extent to which Tito has poured out his heart and soul to her, Iverson has learned nothing as a human being. She closes with a fundraising walk for the organization she started, Cure Autism Now, about which she writes:
"We didn't come out for the walk to show our pride, there was no upside to having autism unless you were the very highest functioning type. We walked to raise money for research, we walked to find treatment and a cure, we walked because our children desperately needed help, and because for many, walking was the only thing they could do." (p 376).
This is, mind you, shortly after she acknowledges that even the most profoundly autistic children can learn to communicate with the right help. She notes, too, that at the walk she saw "no alphabet boards, no keyboards, no voice-output devices." The walk raised $1 million for research. It would have been better spent buying communication devices for the children who attended.
My heart bleeds for Dov, the author's son, whose mother can only see him as tragically broken, living a life that is "no way to live." Dov, who writes to his parents "Why must you doubt everything I know?" (p 298). The contrast with Iverson's purported openmindedness (at one point, she notes that she wouldn't mind at all if Dov turned out to be gay) makes her intolerance all the more hateful. She writes that her son, at age nine, "did things that were deeply disturbing, distressing, and unacceptable, things that no one with an intact mind would do, if only because of the sheer embarrassment of behaving that way" (p 111).
I wish I could shake this woman and point out that there are far worse things in this world than embarrassment, and that "normal" human beings do plenty of disgusting and despiccable and genuinely BAD things without anyone so much as batting an eyelash, simply because these behaviors are so very common. I also want her audience, especially Tito and Dov, to know that even profoundly disabled people can have self-directed lives, serious careers, good friendships, and romantic relationships. People who are completely paralyzed find these things, and I can hardly imagine that someone whose body doesn't obey them is any less likely to find such fulfillment. Every time Iverson "sympathized" with Tito's bitterness about his own chances, I wanted to slap her for not having the decency to know better.
*** THE GOOD ***
So, here's why I can't just recommend that every copy of this book be burned. Tito Mukhopadhyay and his mother Soma offer breathtaking insights, and Iverson explains them excellently. I wish I could pull them all out and make a separate book, free from Iverson's opinions. Here's what I can quote, at least:
"Tito was revealing something no one had ever heard of, thought of, or even dreamed of before. In fact, it had nothing at all to do with what people believed about autism. It had nothing to do with the absence of normal human drives like sociability, empathy, 'theory of mind.'
"Tito was telling us he could not see and hear at the same time. At least not when he was concentrating on something.
"Without narrowing his senses down to one channel, Tito says that the world /'turns into a total chaos.'/
"What's more, Tito suspects that each autistic individual tends to develop one sense more than the others-- because concentrating on one sense is a way to get better information from the environment-- a chance to make more sense of the world." p 70-71 (Of course, it's a stretch to say that no one had ever thought this way about autism before, but certainly most people- especially medical and scientific "experts"- didn't. Iverson later speculates, after interviewing Temple Grandin, that there are "visual" and "auditory" autistic people).
To explain his erratic behavior, Tito (at about age 12) writes Portia a letter entitled "Thinking of apples and doing bananas."
"A fundamental question had begun to form in my mind since getting to know Tito: if Tito was not retarded, if he had language and could communicate, if he had emotions and even emapthy-- then /what was autism/?
"What remained was a constellation of out-of-control behaviors, some repetitive, some impulsive, some obsessive. And the inability to generate voluntary behavior." p 111
"Although they could rarely be understood, Dov and Tito had never stopped trying to speak." p 128. This is one of many profound observations Iverson makes without apparently understanding the implications regarding the intelligence and humanity of autistic people generally. More interesting to note is that later, tests show that Tito cannot hear his own voice while speaking, and when it is amplified and piped back to him, he is amazed and embarrassed by his poor enunciation. This should be the basis for entirely new speech therapy methods for autistic children.
"I considered this for a moment. We all have unconscious or barely conscious behaviors that we engage in, like twirling hair, biting nails, or tapping a foot. Was Tito's entire behavioral repertoire like that? The thought frightened me.
"Tito went on to explain a further subdivision of his unconscious behaviors. He called these /constant happenings/ and /instant happenings/. Constant happenings were the unconscious behaviors he engaged in most of the time to manage his sensory experience. These were the repetitive behaviors we called stimming, the rocking and flapping he used to regulate his erratic nervous system. And then there were the instant happenings; these were the sudden, impulsive behaviors which also took place at the edge of awareness. These instant happenings could be as simple as grabbing food off someone's plate or as explosive as strangling his mother. Tito explained that he was powerless to stop these instant happenings. And somewhere entirely apart from these two calamitous states, lived the sensitive mind of a young poet." p 128-9
"Tito could not anticipate, he could not wait, he could not pace himself, he did not know how to live in the measured flow of time, defined by predictable events and expectations, the way most people can. This caused him untold anxiety and at times pure, raw, uncontrollable fear and rage.
"Consequently, Soma often avoided telling Tito what was going to happen next. This established an unfortunate cycle in which the less Tito know what was going to happen, the more his anxiety and sense of uncertainty grew. Yet any future event of which he was informed, be it in one hour or in a year, seemed to arrive with the full urgency of the here and now. This drove Tito crazy. If Soma told him that his father was coming for a visit, Tito would become obsessed with waiting for him, and knowing moment to moment exactly how many more weeks, days, hours, and minutes remained until his arrival. This obsession would occur to the extent that it interfered with every other aspect of Tito's life. And the anxiety would grow over the weeks and days until it finally exploded in a violent outburst" p 144
Another excert from Tito's remarkable poetry:
A profound observations: "Now I realized they were not going to be testing what Tito had reported at all. I was beginning to suspect, though I hoped it was not true, that scientists might just be using Tito to try to prove their own ideas, not to investigate what Tito was telling us about what it is really like to be autistic." p 166
"Imagine: your mind thinks, creates ideas and thoughts. You forge a tiny pathway to the outer world to express them, but you need someone else to initiate the use of this pathway. And when the person does initiate for you, they must constantly prompt you along and keep you in your chair long enough to write out what is in your mind. Even then, having succeeded in getting it out, you can't access your own words by reading them yourself or by speaking them." p 178-8
"For Tito, the experience of emotion seems to have lagged far behind his cognitive development, remaining raw and immediate, urgent and overwhelming and completely unmodulated. No one as far as I know had ever described this before-- that autistics could have empthy and theory of mind (the ability to know what another person is thinking or feeling) and understand the own emotions and the emotions of others cognitively, but not be able to filter, modulate, or tolerate the direct experience of emotion itself. The idea made sense when one considered Tito's other perceptual abnormalities and lack of modulation and integration across his sensory systems." p 182-3 (This difficulty with filtering both internal and external sensations is now more widely accepted as the "intense world" theory of autism).
"Tito reported that it was much harder for him to comprehend what was written by any method other than listening. He explained that this was because the struggle to read aloud or silently demanded so much effort that it was extremely distracting and diminished the attention he could focus on understanding the text.
"'How can a mind that is literate and a body that is capable of physical movement not work together well enough to be able to read unassisted?' I wondered" p 186 (Note that autistic people who prefer visual input often experience a similar struggle when trying to understand spoken language as opposed to the written word.)
"...flapping his hands was an instant physical sensation that calmed Tito's scattered senses and his anxiety. Writing was calming too, but it was not an instant fix. Writing depended on a more complex and precarious sequence of events, it depended on having thoughts that could be easily disrupted by the environment, and writing itself depended on someone handing him a tablet of paper and a pencil and prompting him. All these things were entirely out of his control. Hand flapping and rocking were the most accessible, rapid, and reliable means Tito had to regain a sense of his body when he was anxious, which in turn calmed him down. I thought about all the hours of therapy Dov had undergone in an attempt to make him stop stimming. I had always wondered why Dov was so driven by those repetitive, strange, stereotyped movements." p 193 (I have to be bitter again here and note that this is the closest Iverson comes to expressing remorse for "all those hours" of hurtful "therapy").
A later GSR study reveals in autistic kids "Their arousal was racing between extremes that most people rarely experience. And these peaks were occurring about twice as frequently..." p 336
" The human brain actually does process images in the very components Tito described, namely color, shape, size, and so on, but we are unaware of these separate elements that our brains seemlessly combine into a smooth whole, incorporating all the elements. Tito, it seemed, was actually seeing these individual visual elements and then having to fit them together into a mental picture. What a trememdous amount of work to see a simple door!...
...[At another time] he said that he 'took a snapshot' and ran out of the room to study it and that was why he jumped up and ran out so often....
...The important point was that he never got the parts and the whole picture together, at the same time." p 238-9
"When he was very young, something thing 'went together' that shouldn't. If he saw a cloud and heard the word 'banana,' they might go together from then on, and he couldn't get them apart. This overassociation between images and words made it so that Tito could not understand or identify things in the environment. He couldn't make sense of the world around him. He didn't realize that voices and people went together when he was very young and he couldn't understnd why the voices stopped when people left the room." p 240
"Was the delay Tito experiences between hearing and seeing caused by years of listening but not looking? Had Tito inadvertently trained his sense to operate separately.. to lessen the 'chaos'?" p 241
"One of the first and most astonishing things Tito had ever told me was that he couldn't feel his body." p 243
"[Neurologist Bruce Miller says apraxia] was the failure of a circuit involving the frontal, opercular, and parietal areas of the brain. The opercular area was a component of Broca's area, the part of the brain involved in speech. People with opercular damage could write better than they could speak" p 245
"'So you start to say word one but then you start to think about word two and word one is gone?' John [Houde] clarified. 'Exactly,' wrote Tito" p 255
"I knew it was hard for people to keep reminding themselves that regardless of his overt behavior, Tito had a fully present mind. Perhaps if a person acted as oblivious to others as Tito did, it was counterintuitive to think that they were aware of the reactions of others." p 260 (I admit to struggling with this myself, still! And so does almost every researcher who meets Tito. You'd hope that scientists would be less likely to judge things purely on surface appearance, but people seem remarkable bad at giving one another the benefit of the doubt.)
"Even though Dov had picked up an amazing amount of information by listening and through sheer exposure, there was a lot he hadn't been exposed to... his academic education had been largely confined to the hour or so a day he'd spent listening to his sister do her homework in his room. All the while at school he was being taught at the pre-academic level. I could hardly bear to think of the endless hours he's spent failing at tasks we count not do, like counting from one to ten by manipulating colored cubes, when he already knew basic arithmetic. In fact this was the sort of activity he had been engaged in all day, every day, his whole life.
"I now saw Dov in another new light: instead of seeing him as uncooperative or uninterested, I saw him as infinitely patient, never giving up." p 311
"In the back of my mind, a frightening thought was taking shape-- a perfectly logical thought that I had been surpressing because it was so huge and so terrible. If Soma's method did work with other autistic children, then the unthinkable was probably true-- it was likely that there were many more of these so-called lower-functioning autistic children and adults who possessed an intact mind but had absolutely no way to let anyone know about it." p 317
"You had to look at how the child stims, [Soma] said, observe the pace of it. And you had to go faster. The autistic child is constantly distracted, so /you/ had to become the biggest distractor of all.
'You have to /become/ the stim!" Soma declared.
"And in polar opposition to everyone else who worked with autistic children, Soma completely ignored behavior. In fact, she never referred to it at all. I noticed she always allowed Dov to hold his favorite beads or whatever else he had been stimming with in his left hand while she worked with him.
"Soma never pressured Dov to perform. Instead she intensely urged and prompted, all the while encouraging and reassuring him. She never used a reward system. Instead, she proclaimed that the accomplishment itself nd being recognized as intelligent were the autistic child's greatest rewards." p 325
"Only two months later, by Christmas, all nine children in the class were starting to point with Soma... Every child could do some level of academics and all of them were demonstrating cognitive abilities far beyond what anyone had ever suspected they were capable of." p 358
If only these past few quotes had been the central point of the entire book!
There is excellent information in here about the autistic experience and stunning insights into how the autistic mind works (much of it given by Tito and Soma, but a lot explained by Iverson herself)... But it must come with a strong warning.
The entire book is horribly marred by the narrow-minded intolerance with which the author approaches autism and autistic people. She is like a bird researcher who, discovering penguins, bemoans that they cannot fly and refuses to see that there is anything beautiful and valuable in them.
This book is compellingly written-- clear language, tidy narrative, good pacing. For that reason, too, I want to warn autism parents away, lest they get swept up and begin to sympathize with the dehumanizing viewpoint.
I'll go over the problems first, then the helpful stuff. Sensitive readers may want to skip straight to the "good" section.
*** THE BAD ***
I admit, I came to actually hate Portia Iverson as a person. To be fair, she starts at a disadvantage-- knowing almost nothing about autism, and all of it completely wrong. The doctor who diagnoses Dov advises her and her husband to "hold on to each other and cry. Get on with your lives" (p 11), and with appalling advice like that, I can see why she would assume autism to be a horrible thing... especially since the next "expert" she turns to is the infamous Lovaas. But her understanding never changes, in spite of all her experiences.
She opens the book by saying that autism "stole" her son's mind, despite her later discovery that his intelligence is at least normal, if not high, for his age. Chapter 1 starts: "There is a small group of people in this world to whom an event so devastating has occurred that they may even have stopped believing in God."
Yes, those people exist, and they are not a small group, either-- millions have lost homes and families, or suffered war, persecution, torture, starvation, the death of a child. That Iverson puts her well-to-do family in the same category because they have a son who isn't what they expected is sickening, pathetic, and hugely disrespectful not only to autistic people but also to anyone who has experienced genuine tragedy.
And by the end of the book, in spite of all the information she has gathered, all the insights, and the incredible extent to which Tito has poured out his heart and soul to her, Iverson has learned nothing as a human being. She closes with a fundraising walk for the organization she started, Cure Autism Now, about which she writes:
"We didn't come out for the walk to show our pride, there was no upside to having autism unless you were the very highest functioning type. We walked to raise money for research, we walked to find treatment and a cure, we walked because our children desperately needed help, and because for many, walking was the only thing they could do." (p 376).
This is, mind you, shortly after she acknowledges that even the most profoundly autistic children can learn to communicate with the right help. She notes, too, that at the walk she saw "no alphabet boards, no keyboards, no voice-output devices." The walk raised $1 million for research. It would have been better spent buying communication devices for the children who attended.
My heart bleeds for Dov, the author's son, whose mother can only see him as tragically broken, living a life that is "no way to live." Dov, who writes to his parents "Why must you doubt everything I know?" (p 298). The contrast with Iverson's purported openmindedness (at one point, she notes that she wouldn't mind at all if Dov turned out to be gay) makes her intolerance all the more hateful. She writes that her son, at age nine, "did things that were deeply disturbing, distressing, and unacceptable, things that no one with an intact mind would do, if only because of the sheer embarrassment of behaving that way" (p 111).
I wish I could shake this woman and point out that there are far worse things in this world than embarrassment, and that "normal" human beings do plenty of disgusting and despiccable and genuinely BAD things without anyone so much as batting an eyelash, simply because these behaviors are so very common. I also want her audience, especially Tito and Dov, to know that even profoundly disabled people can have self-directed lives, serious careers, good friendships, and romantic relationships. People who are completely paralyzed find these things, and I can hardly imagine that someone whose body doesn't obey them is any less likely to find such fulfillment. Every time Iverson "sympathized" with Tito's bitterness about his own chances, I wanted to slap her for not having the decency to know better.
*** THE GOOD ***
So, here's why I can't just recommend that every copy of this book be burned. Tito Mukhopadhyay and his mother Soma offer breathtaking insights, and Iverson explains them excellently. I wish I could pull them all out and make a separate book, free from Iverson's opinions. Here's what I can quote, at least:
"Tito was revealing something no one had ever heard of, thought of, or even dreamed of before. In fact, it had nothing at all to do with what people believed about autism. It had nothing to do with the absence of normal human drives like sociability, empathy, 'theory of mind.'
"Tito was telling us he could not see and hear at the same time. At least not when he was concentrating on something.
"Without narrowing his senses down to one channel, Tito says that the world /'turns into a total chaos.'/
"What's more, Tito suspects that each autistic individual tends to develop one sense more than the others-- because concentrating on one sense is a way to get better information from the environment-- a chance to make more sense of the world." p 70-71 (Of course, it's a stretch to say that no one had ever thought this way about autism before, but certainly most people- especially medical and scientific "experts"- didn't. Iverson later speculates, after interviewing Temple Grandin, that there are "visual" and "auditory" autistic people).
To explain his erratic behavior, Tito (at about age 12) writes Portia a letter entitled "Thinking of apples and doing bananas."
"Quite weird isn't it?(Portia, of course, doesn't even acknowledge what a heart-felt gift and act of trust this letter is. And they accuse autistic people of lacking empathy!!).
But so it happens. And it happens with me.
Specially, when I am trying to think of something emotional and when the emotion gets too large to express. While, at the same time, it becomes important to get it expressed.
So what if it comes out as a laughter-fit when the mind is filled with tears?
So what if the manifestation of the emotion comes out as running around or perhaps sniffing the closest possible object?
The important thing is to let the body lose the burden of emoton that makes it too small to hold it any further...
...Yet Tito feels himself running around or perhaps giggling aloud fully aware that it is not what he means to do. And he cannot do anything about it because he cannot stop himself...
And what about the feeling of appreciation which was trying to come out of his mind?
It gets sucked drying up the senses and drying up the feelings.
'What use are the feelings, when you do not know how to feel them?'
And the mind thinks another 'apple.' Body does a 'banana.'" p 95-6
"A fundamental question had begun to form in my mind since getting to know Tito: if Tito was not retarded, if he had language and could communicate, if he had emotions and even emapthy-- then /what was autism/?
"What remained was a constellation of out-of-control behaviors, some repetitive, some impulsive, some obsessive. And the inability to generate voluntary behavior." p 111
"Although they could rarely be understood, Dov and Tito had never stopped trying to speak." p 128. This is one of many profound observations Iverson makes without apparently understanding the implications regarding the intelligence and humanity of autistic people generally. More interesting to note is that later, tests show that Tito cannot hear his own voice while speaking, and when it is amplified and piped back to him, he is amazed and embarrassed by his poor enunciation. This should be the basis for entirely new speech therapy methods for autistic children.
"I considered this for a moment. We all have unconscious or barely conscious behaviors that we engage in, like twirling hair, biting nails, or tapping a foot. Was Tito's entire behavioral repertoire like that? The thought frightened me.
"Tito went on to explain a further subdivision of his unconscious behaviors. He called these /constant happenings/ and /instant happenings/. Constant happenings were the unconscious behaviors he engaged in most of the time to manage his sensory experience. These were the repetitive behaviors we called stimming, the rocking and flapping he used to regulate his erratic nervous system. And then there were the instant happenings; these were the sudden, impulsive behaviors which also took place at the edge of awareness. These instant happenings could be as simple as grabbing food off someone's plate or as explosive as strangling his mother. Tito explained that he was powerless to stop these instant happenings. And somewhere entirely apart from these two calamitous states, lived the sensitive mind of a young poet." p 128-9
"Tito could not anticipate, he could not wait, he could not pace himself, he did not know how to live in the measured flow of time, defined by predictable events and expectations, the way most people can. This caused him untold anxiety and at times pure, raw, uncontrollable fear and rage.
"Consequently, Soma often avoided telling Tito what was going to happen next. This established an unfortunate cycle in which the less Tito know what was going to happen, the more his anxiety and sense of uncertainty grew. Yet any future event of which he was informed, be it in one hour or in a year, seemed to arrive with the full urgency of the here and now. This drove Tito crazy. If Soma told him that his father was coming for a visit, Tito would become obsessed with waiting for him, and knowing moment to moment exactly how many more weeks, days, hours, and minutes remained until his arrival. This obsession would occur to the extent that it interfered with every other aspect of Tito's life. And the anxiety would grow over the weeks and days until it finally exploded in a violent outburst" p 144
Another excert from Tito's remarkable poetry:
Men and women are puzzled by everything I dop 144-5
Doctors use different terminologies to describe me
I just wonder
The thoughts are bigger than I can express
Every move that I make shows how trapped I feel
Under the continuous flow of happenings
The effect of a cause becomes the cause of another effect
...it is a world full of improbabilities
Racing toward uncertainty.
A profound observations: "Now I realized they were not going to be testing what Tito had reported at all. I was beginning to suspect, though I hoped it was not true, that scientists might just be using Tito to try to prove their own ideas, not to investigate what Tito was telling us about what it is really like to be autistic." p 166
"Imagine: your mind thinks, creates ideas and thoughts. You forge a tiny pathway to the outer world to express them, but you need someone else to initiate the use of this pathway. And when the person does initiate for you, they must constantly prompt you along and keep you in your chair long enough to write out what is in your mind. Even then, having succeeded in getting it out, you can't access your own words by reading them yourself or by speaking them." p 178-8
"For Tito, the experience of emotion seems to have lagged far behind his cognitive development, remaining raw and immediate, urgent and overwhelming and completely unmodulated. No one as far as I know had ever described this before-- that autistics could have empthy and theory of mind (the ability to know what another person is thinking or feeling) and understand the own emotions and the emotions of others cognitively, but not be able to filter, modulate, or tolerate the direct experience of emotion itself. The idea made sense when one considered Tito's other perceptual abnormalities and lack of modulation and integration across his sensory systems." p 182-3 (This difficulty with filtering both internal and external sensations is now more widely accepted as the "intense world" theory of autism).
"Tito reported that it was much harder for him to comprehend what was written by any method other than listening. He explained that this was because the struggle to read aloud or silently demanded so much effort that it was extremely distracting and diminished the attention he could focus on understanding the text.
"'How can a mind that is literate and a body that is capable of physical movement not work together well enough to be able to read unassisted?' I wondered" p 186 (Note that autistic people who prefer visual input often experience a similar struggle when trying to understand spoken language as opposed to the written word.)
"...flapping his hands was an instant physical sensation that calmed Tito's scattered senses and his anxiety. Writing was calming too, but it was not an instant fix. Writing depended on a more complex and precarious sequence of events, it depended on having thoughts that could be easily disrupted by the environment, and writing itself depended on someone handing him a tablet of paper and a pencil and prompting him. All these things were entirely out of his control. Hand flapping and rocking were the most accessible, rapid, and reliable means Tito had to regain a sense of his body when he was anxious, which in turn calmed him down. I thought about all the hours of therapy Dov had undergone in an attempt to make him stop stimming. I had always wondered why Dov was so driven by those repetitive, strange, stereotyped movements." p 193 (I have to be bitter again here and note that this is the closest Iverson comes to expressing remorse for "all those hours" of hurtful "therapy").
A later GSR study reveals in autistic kids "Their arousal was racing between extremes that most people rarely experience. And these peaks were occurring about twice as frequently..." p 336
" The human brain actually does process images in the very components Tito described, namely color, shape, size, and so on, but we are unaware of these separate elements that our brains seemlessly combine into a smooth whole, incorporating all the elements. Tito, it seemed, was actually seeing these individual visual elements and then having to fit them together into a mental picture. What a trememdous amount of work to see a simple door!...
...[At another time] he said that he 'took a snapshot' and ran out of the room to study it and that was why he jumped up and ran out so often....
...The important point was that he never got the parts and the whole picture together, at the same time." p 238-9
"When he was very young, something thing 'went together' that shouldn't. If he saw a cloud and heard the word 'banana,' they might go together from then on, and he couldn't get them apart. This overassociation between images and words made it so that Tito could not understand or identify things in the environment. He couldn't make sense of the world around him. He didn't realize that voices and people went together when he was very young and he couldn't understnd why the voices stopped when people left the room." p 240
"Was the delay Tito experiences between hearing and seeing caused by years of listening but not looking? Had Tito inadvertently trained his sense to operate separately.. to lessen the 'chaos'?" p 241
"One of the first and most astonishing things Tito had ever told me was that he couldn't feel his body." p 243
"[Neurologist Bruce Miller says apraxia] was the failure of a circuit involving the frontal, opercular, and parietal areas of the brain. The opercular area was a component of Broca's area, the part of the brain involved in speech. People with opercular damage could write better than they could speak" p 245
"'So you start to say word one but then you start to think about word two and word one is gone?' John [Houde] clarified. 'Exactly,' wrote Tito" p 255
"I knew it was hard for people to keep reminding themselves that regardless of his overt behavior, Tito had a fully present mind. Perhaps if a person acted as oblivious to others as Tito did, it was counterintuitive to think that they were aware of the reactions of others." p 260 (I admit to struggling with this myself, still! And so does almost every researcher who meets Tito. You'd hope that scientists would be less likely to judge things purely on surface appearance, but people seem remarkable bad at giving one another the benefit of the doubt.)
"Even though Dov had picked up an amazing amount of information by listening and through sheer exposure, there was a lot he hadn't been exposed to... his academic education had been largely confined to the hour or so a day he'd spent listening to his sister do her homework in his room. All the while at school he was being taught at the pre-academic level. I could hardly bear to think of the endless hours he's spent failing at tasks we count not do, like counting from one to ten by manipulating colored cubes, when he already knew basic arithmetic. In fact this was the sort of activity he had been engaged in all day, every day, his whole life.
"I now saw Dov in another new light: instead of seeing him as uncooperative or uninterested, I saw him as infinitely patient, never giving up." p 311
"In the back of my mind, a frightening thought was taking shape-- a perfectly logical thought that I had been surpressing because it was so huge and so terrible. If Soma's method did work with other autistic children, then the unthinkable was probably true-- it was likely that there were many more of these so-called lower-functioning autistic children and adults who possessed an intact mind but had absolutely no way to let anyone know about it." p 317
"You had to look at how the child stims, [Soma] said, observe the pace of it. And you had to go faster. The autistic child is constantly distracted, so /you/ had to become the biggest distractor of all.
'You have to /become/ the stim!" Soma declared.
"And in polar opposition to everyone else who worked with autistic children, Soma completely ignored behavior. In fact, she never referred to it at all. I noticed she always allowed Dov to hold his favorite beads or whatever else he had been stimming with in his left hand while she worked with him.
"Soma never pressured Dov to perform. Instead she intensely urged and prompted, all the while encouraging and reassuring him. She never used a reward system. Instead, she proclaimed that the accomplishment itself nd being recognized as intelligent were the autistic child's greatest rewards." p 325
"Only two months later, by Christmas, all nine children in the class were starting to point with Soma... Every child could do some level of academics and all of them were demonstrating cognitive abilities far beyond what anyone had ever suspected they were capable of." p 358
If only these past few quotes had been the central point of the entire book!
May 29, 2015
Soma and Tito were endlessly fascinating and the only reason(s) I read this book cover to cover (Once he joked about Portia's name and her being a "lady lawyer" not unlike her namesake!). In fact I had to fight against how much I was growing to dislike Portia and her narrative voice to finish the book. Some of the reasons why I found the author nearly intolerable:
1) there is always a point when an activist or advocate becomes really ridiculously demanding, and Portia was at this point often.
2) she seems to write off mentioning as understanding (comprehension, or worse, compassion) - by this I mean she spent quite some time dwelling on how she and those around her/close to her felt about 9/11, and then after noting Soma's indifference to the tragedy, Portia just added simply that Soma had been exposed to many more traumatic religious, political, social upheavals and natural disasters than that she (Portia) could even imagine... and then she moved onto something else entirely.
3) i can't help but feel like she characterized Soma unfairly. she fit in really weird episodes of Soma's lack of understanding of how westerners tend to socialize. she didn't go so far as to demonize or mock Soma's differences, but I think more in order to show that she was gregarious and open-minded than a genuine attempt to accept and know Soma. She seems more concerned about her portrayal of herself in dealing with Soma than her portrayal of Soma
4) regarding sexism - she remarked that it was surprising to see Dov (her own son) learning that dolls are toys for girls (a social rule) as quickly as he had learn things like facts, but when Tito (Soma's son) wrote to her something sexist, she was bothered enough to complain to her husband. Her husband subsequently lectured and 'converted' Tito to the cause of equality, and Portia FELT SMUG. I can't imagine taking issue on something like that with someone from a different culture just because I did not share his point of view, much less if that person was severely autistic, and even less if I also had a beloved son who was severely autistic. I mean, that's fucking petty.
5) speaking of petty: a little girl, in fact, a friend of her daughter's, innocently expressed incredulity when she learned that Dov also attended school. In an effort to restore what she imagined must be Dov's hurt feelings, she had Dov demonstrate the ability to do long division in front of the girls, something she knew full well they had not mastered. In fact, she Asked them about it Knowing they weren't any good at it. And then she proceeded to record their sounds of confusion and lack of understanding as Dov completed a problem. What a petty thing to do with 4th graders, one of whom is also her flesh and blood as much as Dov.
And finally, I probably shouldn't have, but I couldn't help but compared this book to a few nonfiction titles I had enjoyed most recently. As far as a heartfelt memoir goes, it pales in comparison with My Brother's Madness. The only time I came close to tears was when Soma and Tito were doubted by the scientists Portia had led them to. It read as though Portia was more driven by her cause than her admiration for Soma or the scientists or even her love for Dov. As far as an informative, easy to read, science "popularizer" so to speak goes, this book is about as bad as The Emperor of All Maladies was good. Mukherjee (author of The Emperor) was able to use foreign scientific terms and complex scientific concepts, but in a manner so well ordered by logic that he was easy to understand. In contrast, Ms. Iversen, in an effort to be more easily understood, would use phrases or terms that could almost hold meaning in the most ordinary way, never explain them, and go on to use them to illustrate or support other units of knowledge that similarly remain elusive to her reader. Also, she seems to wonder a lot about what the scientific reality of any given phenomenon is without ever following up with anything in the way of experiments that could confirm or deny her speculations and suspicions. To put it accusingly, it would almost seem as if she's putting a lot of scientifically baseless ideas out there just for the hell of it.
To sum it up, as a biography of the journey undertaken by her and Soma and Tito and Dov, it is abundantly clear that she painted herself in the best light, and was likely unfair to Soma and Tito. As a layman's guide meant to acquaint the average person with scientific strides made in the search for the cure of autism (much in the same vein Mukherjee had documented cancer research), it offered nearly no usable information. The only thing interesting in this regard were the results of some tests that had been done with Dov, Tito, other "low-functioning"/nonverbal autistic children, and Temple Grandin (a high-functioning autistic professional and author of multiple books on her unique experience), but Iversen was unable to guide her readers to the significance of these fascinating results. Lastly, as a piece of propaganda for CAN (now Autism Speaks) in longform, it probably worked a lot better with people more like Iversen than people more like me, in other words, it ought to be wildly successful in this function as people more like her are also more likely to have the material means to help her cause.
1) there is always a point when an activist or advocate becomes really ridiculously demanding, and Portia was at this point often.
2) she seems to write off mentioning as understanding (comprehension, or worse, compassion) - by this I mean she spent quite some time dwelling on how she and those around her/close to her felt about 9/11, and then after noting Soma's indifference to the tragedy, Portia just added simply that Soma had been exposed to many more traumatic religious, political, social upheavals and natural disasters than that she (Portia) could even imagine... and then she moved onto something else entirely.
3) i can't help but feel like she characterized Soma unfairly. she fit in really weird episodes of Soma's lack of understanding of how westerners tend to socialize. she didn't go so far as to demonize or mock Soma's differences, but I think more in order to show that she was gregarious and open-minded than a genuine attempt to accept and know Soma. She seems more concerned about her portrayal of herself in dealing with Soma than her portrayal of Soma
4) regarding sexism - she remarked that it was surprising to see Dov (her own son) learning that dolls are toys for girls (a social rule) as quickly as he had learn things like facts, but when Tito (Soma's son) wrote to her something sexist, she was bothered enough to complain to her husband. Her husband subsequently lectured and 'converted' Tito to the cause of equality, and Portia FELT SMUG. I can't imagine taking issue on something like that with someone from a different culture just because I did not share his point of view, much less if that person was severely autistic, and even less if I also had a beloved son who was severely autistic. I mean, that's fucking petty.
5) speaking of petty: a little girl, in fact, a friend of her daughter's, innocently expressed incredulity when she learned that Dov also attended school. In an effort to restore what she imagined must be Dov's hurt feelings, she had Dov demonstrate the ability to do long division in front of the girls, something she knew full well they had not mastered. In fact, she Asked them about it Knowing they weren't any good at it. And then she proceeded to record their sounds of confusion and lack of understanding as Dov completed a problem. What a petty thing to do with 4th graders, one of whom is also her flesh and blood as much as Dov.
And finally, I probably shouldn't have, but I couldn't help but compared this book to a few nonfiction titles I had enjoyed most recently. As far as a heartfelt memoir goes, it pales in comparison with My Brother's Madness. The only time I came close to tears was when Soma and Tito were doubted by the scientists Portia had led them to. It read as though Portia was more driven by her cause than her admiration for Soma or the scientists or even her love for Dov. As far as an informative, easy to read, science "popularizer" so to speak goes, this book is about as bad as The Emperor of All Maladies was good. Mukherjee (author of The Emperor) was able to use foreign scientific terms and complex scientific concepts, but in a manner so well ordered by logic that he was easy to understand. In contrast, Ms. Iversen, in an effort to be more easily understood, would use phrases or terms that could almost hold meaning in the most ordinary way, never explain them, and go on to use them to illustrate or support other units of knowledge that similarly remain elusive to her reader. Also, she seems to wonder a lot about what the scientific reality of any given phenomenon is without ever following up with anything in the way of experiments that could confirm or deny her speculations and suspicions. To put it accusingly, it would almost seem as if she's putting a lot of scientifically baseless ideas out there just for the hell of it.
To sum it up, as a biography of the journey undertaken by her and Soma and Tito and Dov, it is abundantly clear that she painted herself in the best light, and was likely unfair to Soma and Tito. As a layman's guide meant to acquaint the average person with scientific strides made in the search for the cure of autism (much in the same vein Mukherjee had documented cancer research), it offered nearly no usable information. The only thing interesting in this regard were the results of some tests that had been done with Dov, Tito, other "low-functioning"/nonverbal autistic children, and Temple Grandin (a high-functioning autistic professional and author of multiple books on her unique experience), but Iversen was unable to guide her readers to the significance of these fascinating results. Lastly, as a piece of propaganda for CAN (now Autism Speaks) in longform, it probably worked a lot better with people more like Iversen than people more like me, in other words, it ought to be wildly successful in this function as people more like her are also more likely to have the material means to help her cause.
December 30, 2008
There should be a caveat given before reading this book: this will not be easy to believe. If what this memoir written by a mother of a child with autism claims is true, there is so much to be done. Portia Iverson is obsessed with learning as much as she can about her son's Autism, sets up a foundation and brings over a miraculous Indian woman, Soma, and her autistic son, Tito, who she has taught to communicate. The implications are wide: non-verbal, severely autistic individuals may not be unintelligent as we believe. They may understand, think and dream but be unable to communicate any of it, essentially being trapped. The new method Soma developed seems too good to be true. Maybe it is. Little has come of it since its greater dissemination and if it really does work miracles then every autistic person should have the chance to try her method.
June 6, 2021
This book is one of the most phenomenal on nonverbal autistic people. One woman’s work with her own son, leading to no change on the outside but an outpouring of poetry on the part of the child, has lead to transformation of the understanding of what autism is and how intelligent they really are. This is hands down one of my favorite autobiography books on autism!
May 3, 2019
A phenomenal book, showing pure honesty in the face of adversity. Reading this book gives me courage myself. Unfortunately, some reviews attempt to punish Iversen for her honesty, but I think it is what makes this book beautiful.
October 8, 2011
This is a complicated book to review because I have so many conflicting feelings about it. It is absolutely a must read however, for understanding autism. You can learn more in just this book that anywhere else. Iversen, the mother of an autistic son, starts the foundation Cure Autism Now (now merged with Autism Speaks) with her husband. She writes about her most important endeavor, that of bringing over Tito Mukhopadhyay and his mother Soma from India. Tito is labeled as severely autistic, non-verbal, and with a lot of self-stimulating and uncontrollable behaviors. He has, however, learned a means of communication and is a published poet. His mother Soma was able to teach Tito to point to letters on an alphabet chart, and to write himself. She is now a teacher of what is called the rapid-prompting method and her technique has worked on other children, including Iversen's son. The book then is a fascinating glimpse into autism itself. Tito is not by any means recovered, so he is often able to relate what it feels like to be autistic. He writes that hand-flapping is a way of feeling his body. He has very little body awareness and hand-flapping is a way of making sure he is still there. Interesting, Iversen talks about early ABA methods when they would shock students out of certain behaviors. Despite shocking, they could not make autistics stop hand-flapping. Most animals, the scientists knew, would stop certain behavior if shocked enough, including to their own detriment, such as not eating. So hand-flapping is essential behavior to autistics. Tito also articulates the fact that much of his behavior remains beyond his control. He is an interesting contrast to Temple Grandin, whom Iversen talks to about Tito. While Temple relies heavily on her visual sense and processing, Tito is almost unable to use this sense at all and relies on his auditory sense. In fact, Tito relates that he can only use one sense at a time and if he is listening to something, he is unable to make eye contact or notice anything visually. It really is a fascinating glimpse into the autistic mind. Soma is able to teach the method to Iversen's son and they are able to see that he has learned much more than they knew. One of the more interesting things that they learn is that the communication is not always easy. With both boys, communication is still not like it is with 'typical' peers. Communication alone is not a bridge to a so-called 'typical' boy trapped with no communication. Some things cannot be answered. Even easy questions such as what they want for breakfast. But other things can be expressed with such depth and loveliness that it is astonishing. Fascinating read. I did not give it five stars because I did not care for the author much or for the way that the book was written. She admits that she does not spend much time with her autistic son because she doesn't know how to be with him. It seems that her other children have also suffered from neglect in her obsession with autism. While I can sympathize--as a mother dealing with autism myself--I just found her a bit cold. Also in her treatment of Soma, who seemed to desire a closer relationship with the author. While I understand that this might be difficult--being from two different cultures--was it necessary to recount this in the story, as well as the author's rejection of her? It was a bit weird and ruined for me what was an absolutely fascinating look into an amazing group of people.
November 6, 2012
Mi ha colpita molto il fatto che si parli relativamente poco del figlio autistico dell'autrice. Oltre a essere un saggio sull'autismo e sulle sue implicazioni neurologiche, il libro si concentra su Tito, un ragazzino autistico indiano che rivoluziona ogni idea sul misterioso mondo dell'autismo. Tito ha comportamenti ossessivi, non riesce a stare fermo né a parlare, eppure sua madre gli ha insegnato a scrivere, e le sue frasi rivelano pensieri profondi, perfettamente comprensibili, e così... normali. Tito spiega come si sente, perché si comporta in un determinato modo senza riuscire a controllarsi, e apre una finestra importante sull'autismo. Dopo Tito, altri bambini autistici considerati completamente incapaci di intendere impareranno a compitare e a esprimersi, con effetti davvero commoventi. Dopo una vita di silenzio e frustrazione, è bello essere in grado di esprimere i propri bisogni più elementari ed essere capiti.
È una storia vera, ed è anche un notevole passo avanti per comprendere questo disturbo così difficile da sondare.
È una storia vera, ed è anche un notevole passo avanti per comprendere questo disturbo così difficile da sondare.
January 7, 2017
I knew next to nothing about Autism and the families that must learn to come to terms with these individuals limitations when I picked up this CD, but it looked interesting, so... what the heck. I was amazed at how insightful and captivating this book was. I hope many people who work with Autistics have the opportunity to learn lessons from these families and are heartened by the knowledge that inside the un-cooperating bodies and minds of their charges, probably lie intelligent, observant people who are desperate to be heard, acknowledged and taught how to communicate reasonably effectively.
I bought the CD for a long drive and now I have offered it to friends who have an autistic daughter... If they already have read it, it is going to my local library where hopefully many people will be exposed to it and learn much as I did.
I bought the CD for a long drive and now I have offered it to friends who have an autistic daughter... If they already have read it, it is going to my local library where hopefully many people will be exposed to it and learn much as I did.
February 24, 2010
The cover and title of this book are in some ways misleading. This is not a personal story or a memoir, though it has personal elements and is written from the author's direct experience. Primarily, it's a medical mystery about autism, written for the layperson. It's in the vein of "Lorenzo's Oil"; showing how the sheer dedication and perseverance (some might call it "obsession") of average parents can simultaneously save or drastically improve the life of a child and advance the cause of scientific inquiry.
Even if I didn't know Portia and Dov, I would still love this book; anyone interested in cognition, neuroscience and psychology should enjoy this immensely. It's well-written, the pacing is great, and it's inspiring. You leave the book with tremendous admiration for Portia and Soma and a sincere desire to get to know the two extraordinary sons at the heart of the story.
Even if I didn't know Portia and Dov, I would still love this book; anyone interested in cognition, neuroscience and psychology should enjoy this immensely. It's well-written, the pacing is great, and it's inspiring. You leave the book with tremendous admiration for Portia and Soma and a sincere desire to get to know the two extraordinary sons at the heart of the story.
September 2, 2007
Amazing book.
I was eagerly turning the pages dying to know more about the mind of this boy. A lot of her observations were not rooted in science but they seemed to poignant and insightful. It was a shame that these ideas aren't accepted or explored unless they can be tested and accepted by the peer-review science method. It just goes to show there ARE some things that can't be explained by science alone.
I was very taken with this book. What a wonderful world to explore. I say wonderful, realizing that autistic children are trapped in this world and taken forgranted, but wonderful b/c it spoke out for these children and showed the tip of the iceberg of what lies inside of them and gives hope for breaking through.
And I learned a lot about autism.
I was eagerly turning the pages dying to know more about the mind of this boy. A lot of her observations were not rooted in science but they seemed to poignant and insightful. It was a shame that these ideas aren't accepted or explored unless they can be tested and accepted by the peer-review science method. It just goes to show there ARE some things that can't be explained by science alone.
I was very taken with this book. What a wonderful world to explore. I say wonderful, realizing that autistic children are trapped in this world and taken forgranted, but wonderful b/c it spoke out for these children and showed the tip of the iceberg of what lies inside of them and gives hope for breaking through.
And I learned a lot about autism.
April 5, 2010
Been looking for Paul Collins, Not Even Wrong, but found Strange Son at library instead. Very interesting story about how Portia Iverson made herself into an expert on autism for the sake of her son Dov who is diagnosed autistic. Iverson combs the medical literature, meets researchers and starts organizations ("Cure Autism Now") to tackle the problem of autism head-on. She meets Soma Mukhopadhyay who had been able to elicit communication and from her autistic son. Their work today has resulted in new headway on the problem and has allowed us to glimpse the world of autism from a new perspective.
July 22, 2008
Somtimes I got tired of the repetition but by and large I found this as fascinating as I do most books about the human mind. It's written by the mother of an autistic boy, who starts a foundation with her husband for research and the quest they undertake to discover more about the mind of their son and of other children with autism. The author discovers a boy in India and the method his mother has created to communicate with him and, just as importantly, with the world. It is a method that seems to work with children with a certain type of autism - fascinating.
Want to read
January 17, 2009Have been interested in Autism to an extent, at my daughter's K-8 school there was a great autism program and so she had 1-2 autistic kids in the main class periods all the way through.
And this in particular sounds excellent, since it relates to the more severe instances of autism.
Plus, I'm always relatetively interested in the brain.
Then add the India part, this Mom there who researched on her own and found a way to breakthrough to her son- thereby potentially leading the way for everyone else.
Very exciting!
And this in particular sounds excellent, since it relates to the more severe instances of autism.
Plus, I'm always relatetively interested in the brain.
Then add the India part, this Mom there who researched on her own and found a way to breakthrough to her son- thereby potentially leading the way for everyone else.
Very exciting!
July 9, 2009
While the author may not be the next literary genius, the passion she devotes to learning the way to break into her son's world is nothing short of obsession. One that has opened up the doors to a whole new way of thinking about autistic individuals and their worlds behind the erratic behavior we've been using to see the individual as a whole. Ms. Iverson opens our eyes to the potential and the heartbreak of (mis)communication in autism. A definite must read for anyone interested in autism, or mental health disorders in general.
May 25, 2011
Excellent book about a mother's quest to understand her autistic son. Her drive to find out more about his problem and help him is amazing! It made me happy to see that she and her husband held their marriage together deite the emotional and physical toll of dealing with their situation. The information in this book about brain function in typical and autistic individualsnos fascinating. I came away with a greater appreciation for the ability to communicate with others, especially with my children.
October 5, 2022
An excellent book for those wanting more insight into how the autistic mind works -- and into the Rapid Prompting Method (which I've seen for myself CAN indeed work.
This book does not have a stand-up-and-cheer ending. It does, however, have appendices with methods for reaching an autistic mind.
The book is VERY detailed with lots of science and scientists (neuro specialists), so those with only a passing interest in autism might not like this book. Even I, with a keen interest in teaching non-verbal autistics, feel that the book drags.
This book does not have a stand-up-and-cheer ending. It does, however, have appendices with methods for reaching an autistic mind.
The book is VERY detailed with lots of science and scientists (neuro specialists), so those with only a passing interest in autism might not like this book. Even I, with a keen interest in teaching non-verbal autistics, feel that the book drags.
February 5, 2010
A complicated book, which was written to tell the story of one mom's method of communicating with her son, with a big scientific exploration in the middle. Important to show some of the findings along the way, which due to the unique nature of each disabled child, and the rapid nature of their learning which can make scientific studies difficult to replicate, but the observations no less valid.
Just another in a list of 'voices' for me as I try to expand my perspectives.
Just another in a list of 'voices' for me as I try to expand my perspectives.
March 2, 2015
This book is a life changer for me. I never have realized the true experience of every family who are experiencing this great challenges in life. Hopefully this book would also inspire other families who are experiencing same kind of unique challenge in their life. To be able to give them hope and light. God wouldn't give us challenges that we can't face, because He knows that we can solve every problems in our own unique ways.
January 28, 2008
A bit much about Portia, which is easy to forgive given the scope and depth of this book. Encountering autism as a challenge to be met instead of marginalized, Iverson devotes her life to focusing the scientific community on the particularities of autism. Profound consideration of the nature and effects of the disorder.
August 17, 2008
A very insightful look at autism. An in depth view of a child with autism and the way in which he communicates. Also, discusses the possibilities that children with autism develop one sense much stronger than the other senses. We typically look at children with autism as visual learner and force all kinds of pictures on them. This book takes a different look. Interesting read!
November 1, 2014
I found this to be a VERY interesting take on autism -- how autistic people experience the world, how their bodies and minds work. You get a peek into the mind of a low-functioning but highly intelligent autistic boy. It sets a very hopeful tone for other autistic people who have trouble communicating.
June 13, 2015
Props to author Portia Iverson for convincing Soma to come to the U.S. with her son, Tito and for recognizing the potential in Soma's method to coax language from non-verbal children. A more recent and less chatty book about Soma's Rapid Prompting Method is Ido in Autismland: Climbing Out of Autism's Silent Prison, which I would recommend over this book.
January 9, 2008
Fascinating topic, good information, helpful insight for my work with an autistic student. Had to wade through every. detail. of. every. moment. to get to it, though. Half the size, and some editing would mean more readers.
August 12, 2009
This book took me about a year to read. I kept putting it down to read other books. What started out as an interesting topic, eventually turned into a dragging descent into TextbookLand.
I'm really glad to be done. I could have done without so much of the science.
I'm really glad to be done. I could have done without so much of the science.
March 23, 2009
This is the back story of how CAN- Cure Autism Now- foundation started. I'm not a huge fan of the facilitated communication approach used in the book, but if some of the research the children were put through had something useful to say for the autism world, then ok!
Currently reading
August 15, 2009 I'm a little irritated that this woman spends more time with another woman's son instead of her own. She has totally neglected her kids, including her own autistic son to spend time with another autistic child.
July 30, 2011
I enjoyed the background of Portia and why she started the company she did. I had heard of it briefly in relation to work, but I really didn't know too much about it or what brought it around. I enjoyed it.
June 30, 2013
I found this book to be so interesting. I can only imagine how hard it must be to raise a child with Autism. The ways these women found to communicate with their children is so inspiring. They never give up.
March 1, 2013
Autism in the raw, amazing read, helped you to have a better understanding of autism. The struggles and hopes are well discribed. Most of the time I felt part of the families. Prob will read again.
July 31, 2015
I LOVE this book! Whoever thought a 9-year old would love this book? I don't know. What 9-year old liked the book? ME!
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