Lauren Kenworthy Ph.D.Recensioni

Received from early reviewers

For those not familiar with HFA this contains basic information and ideas to get you started. It is very simplistic and easy to read, which can be helpful for those who are looking for quick answers. Much of the information is readily available in other sources, but it may be helpful to those who do not wish to spend much time researching. I do have a hard time with generalizing an entire population with specific characteristics. Many of these tips will work on some children, but many will not. Each child with Autism is different, just as all children in general are different.

As a community health nurse who often works with kids who have special learning needs, but more importantly as the aunt of a 4 year old on the spectrum, this book is invaluable. The emphasis placed on utilizing a child's strengths to achieve success in the home and in the classroom is key. A team approach is not only necessary but crucial - with the child/adolescent being the most important part of that team - for all of the child's goals to be met.

I appreciate the format of this book. It may have terminology new to parents but it is not difficult to read. I will be giving this to my sister, knowing she will have a guide for navigating her son's school years and the challenges and achievements that will be sure to come for him.

To parents and family members of kids with autism, I highly recommend "The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old-Boy with Autism" by Naoki Higashida and David Mitchell.

This is a very ambitious book. I preferred the passages educating the reader about what is autism, how it was discovered and how a world war delayed fundamental research over the conditions. For parents, it will be very useful. It has fact sheets and clearly labeled paragraphs which suggest how to recognize behaviors and propose alternative when faced with obstruction, repetitive or rigid behavior. In fact, this book should be recommended to educators in that it implies a supportive school system which may not always be the case if individual educators are not trained. A maze of resources are available within a school system that the parent will have to compete for but at the end of the day, educators share this responsibility with the school system to acquire more knowledge about the possible cause for the behavior of their students, which require them to think outside the box asking themselves how is what I teach about received rather than being on broadcast only.

Rather than the "horrible teacher" my son may at times describe, quite often misguided, the authors' call for flexible and supportive teachers favoring smooth class transitions, absence of power struggles, clear explanations and routines, praises and corrections and organized materials, should not remain unanswered.

The next book should logically be how to transition from school to the workplace where so many managers shield themselves within rigid corporate standards to deny any support to behavior that it becomes too easy to characterize as "insubordinate and disruptive". If success is defined as knowing oneself better, then I do think this book offers useful avenues to explore for the success of all involved in a child's education, including this child.

I received this book through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers Program.

My son is nine and about to enter the 4th grade. He's high-functioning autistic. We've been blessed so far that our local public school has been 100% supportive, that his teachers have been fair, and that we've had no problems with Individual Education Programs (IEPs) or modifications to help him cope. This coming year will be a major transition, though--he moves to a new building at his same school, he loses the beloved aide he's had since kindergarten, and of course, he has a new teacher to adapt to.

The book is addressed to both parents and teachers. It is heavy on lingo at some points, though the terminology is necessary for parents to know as they work through the system. Emphasis is on success at school, but extends to everyday behavior (by both the child and parents) at home toward the ultimate goal of graduating school and moving into the work force. I really like how they address the balance of won't or can't behaviors, such as in lists like this:
- Is it oppositional, stubborn OR difficulty with flexibility?
- Is it lazy OR difficulty initiating and shifting?
- Is it self-centered OR poor social interactions?
- Is it work refusal OR motor and organization problems?
- Is it insensitivity OR difficulty reading social cues?

Likewise, they look to involuntary responses to the environment. If the student can't focus, it is because of a noise that no one else would notice? Placement in the room? The authors make it clear that adaptations should be made, but also that the student should be continually challenged so that they can progress.

Many books on autism focus on younger ages. This book does go into old and basic stuff, for my family, like facing the diagnosis or doing an IEP for the first time, but it also spends a great deal of time on the school years and on the progression to occupational training as a teenager and what comes after high school graduation.

Citations fill the book and there's an extensive bibliography at the back along with support network information and forms that can be copied.

This is a book I'll be keeping on my shelf and likely will reference throughout the coming years.

This book was supposed to be for me.

By that I mean, of course, that I am autistic. And yet, I managed to get through school -- just barely -- without any special interventions. I had to; I wasn't diagnosed as autistic until after age fifty. Could my schools have done more for me? Absolutely. What should they have done? This book tries to find the answers.

Most of the time, I think, it succeeds. And yet, as I tried to read it over to figure out what might have worked for me, I saw a lot that seemed completely irrelevant. And I found it a really depressing book. E.g. there was a section that said that a lot of autistic children should just be encouraged to masturbate because it is the only sex life they'll ever have. Yes, this is going to be true in far too many cases -- but making it a goal, or planning for it, while still in school?

The book seems to treat all autistic children as problem students who act out all the time. Where are the proposals to deal with the quiet students who just sit there and fail? They certainly exist -- I was one of them. But they don't get any attention in the book -- and probably won't in the classroom.

I'm also bothered by the fact that all the quotes about ways autistics succeed seem to be from just two people, Temple Grandin and John Elder Robison. Autistics are a very diverse population, and we can't all be lumped with those two. I, for instance, am not like Grandin, who is a "visual thinker" -- and Robison and his idea of practical jokes frankly disgust me. What's in this book for the non-visual thinkers among us?

And I can add at least one idea that the authors don't seem to have considered. Because autistics are unusual, we often discover our own ways to deal with problems -- ways that make no sense to normal people whose brains are programmed a different way. But other autistics might well benefit from learning the techniques of fellow autistics. Indeed, all the social learning I have done in the last thirty years came from being around other people with significant autistic traits. Where do the autistics get together to compare notes?

In reading about intervention plans and support staff and special schools and the like, I couldn't help but think that, these days, too much support is being offered. We can't afford to have six or seven different professionals follow each kid around. What is needed is a lot less "support" and a lot more acceptance by the system. And if you need an attorney to defend your child in school (p. 154), you the parent have a problem!

Also, what happens to the other kids in the class with these hyper-helped autistic students? There is so much effort devoted to helping the messed-up kid that it will surely interfere with teaching the others. And normal children have the right to a suitable education too!

This is not to deny the need for reasonable accommodations for students with autism -- e.g. if a kid can't handle loud noises, he shouldn't be placed in a classroom right above a noisy boiler or machine shop. But these kids won't be coddled forever -- once they get out into real life, all they'll get is what are legally defined as "reasonable accommodations" -- which means they won't have support staff or co-employees or the chance to take all day to write a sentence or two! "School success" doesn't mean "Let's keep the kids from having trouble"; it means "Let's find ways to help them get along."

I really, really didn't feel as if the authors understand autism. Not my kind, anyway. This isn't rare -- my first "autism-trained" therapist mostly made threats at me -- but how can a book be successful if it doesn't understand its subjects? This doesn't feel like a game plan; it feels like the authors took every successful intervention they've ever heard of, threw them at the wall, and hoped that, somewhere in that kitchen sink, there would be something that works. Instead, I suspect they'll smother the students.

This sounds incredibly harsh. That's because so much of what was said in this book was so depressing. I know that most of it works most of the time. But let this be a warning: Some of it won't work. This book is not the answer to the needs of every student with high-functioning autism. Read it, get ideas from it -- and then be prepared to do something else, because your child with autism won't be quite the same as the students for whom this book was designed. Because all people with autism are different.½

I found this book to provide an exceptionally cogent explanation of the diagnosis of HFASD as well as some of issues which lead to the change of diagnostic system in the DSM 5. I also appreciated the organization of the sections which provided tips for school success and the inclusion of suggestions for transition and work which are increasingly important topics.