Short description
Intimate, bold, and inspiring, Autism Heroes provides a compelling and sensitive account of the experiences of 38 families from different walks of life confronting the challenges of autism with courage, tenacity and love. With empathy and expertise gained from her three decades of leadership of The Help Group and commitment to children with special needs, Dr. Barbara Firestone engages the families in candid, powerful and deeply affecting conversations about their lives. Each family narrative is set against the backdrop of her insightful essays about dignity, hope, opportunity and love, which are fundamentally important to all families living with autism. The families offer their experiences openly and honestly, sharing their challenges, triumphs, and hopes. Their candor helps demystify and destigmatize autism and embraces other parents just beginning or already on the journey.
Long description
Autism Heroes: Portraits of Families Meeting the Challenge collects the stories of families who are affected by autism spectrum disorders. Through her work at the Help Group, Dr Firestone has followed many families through the years. The portraits collected here are the distillation of her candid conversations and interviews with forty of these families.Each family's successful strategies for coping are summarized in a family-to-family guide that is practical and inspirational, offering advice on practical aspects such as early detection and diagnosis, intervention and educational strategies, but emphasizing the importance of maintaining dignity and self-esteem, hope and a sense of opportunity, and keeping love alive within the family. Throughout the book the focus is on the voices of parents, children and siblings.This book will offer inspiration, solace, and practical advice to families affected by autism spectrum disorders, and moving insights to all those who work with, or whose lives are affected by, autism.
Review
Few have the combination of compassion, rigorous knowledge, passion for the field, and accomplishments in helping literally thousands of children with autism spectrum disorders as does Barbara Firestone. She is also an extraordinary listener, and a great observer of people. -- Michael E. O'Hanlon Brookings Institution
Table of contents
- Acknowledgements.
- Forewords.
- Preface.
- Introduction.
- Dignity.
- Hope.
- Opportunity.
- Love.
- Afterword.
- Participating Families.
- About The Help Group.
- Further Reading.