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The Bottom Line

By Jayne Lytel; 272 pages. Subtitle: Give Your Child a Fighting Chance From the Start.

Getting a diagnosis as early as possible, and taking advantage of interventions offered by state programs and school districts (and your own pocketbook, as far as it will stretch), is good advice for parents of children with special needs, whether they're dealing with autism or not. By sharing her own story and then distilling what worked into a strong informational text, Lytel, founder of The Early Intervention Network, provides a useful how-to and what-not-to for parents just starting out.

About the Guide Rating



Pros

• Combines personal memoir with informational text
• Gives details of managing special education and early intervention
• Presents overview of many therapies for autism, conventional and unconventional
• Includes extensive listings of Internet resources throughout the book
• Much of the material is of interest to parents of children with any sort of special needs

Cons

• Maybe a little too dismissive of solutions that didn't work for the author's son
• Story of bankruptcy and school legal battles may be overwhelming to some parents
• Author's unresolved feelings about disability seem to color some of her judgments
• If you're uncomfortable with the concept of "curing" autism, parts of this book may bug you

Description

• Chapter 1: Leo's Story: The Power of Acting Early
• Chapter 2: Something's Not Right: Warning Signs
• Chapter 3: Evaluation and Diagnosis
• Chapter 4: Coping With a Diagnosis: What You and Your Family Are In For
• Chapter 5: Understanding Autism: A Spectrum of Clues
• Chapter 6: Promising Treatments

• Chapter 7: Alternative Therapies
• Chapter 8: Educating Your Child: Getting It Right
• Chapter 9: Advocating for Your Child's Rights
• Chapter 10: The Financial Toll: Who Pays for What, and How to Cope With the Strain on Your Pocketbook

Guide Review - Book Review: Act Early Against Autism

What do you do when you start to suspect something might not be right with your child? You have lots of voices telling you to wait and see, but that little voice inside keeps insisting "Do something now!" The options for action seem overwhelming, the price of inaction intolerable.

Coming to rescue parents in those perilous moments is this combination memoir/how-to, celebrating the value of early intervention and zealous advocacy in transforming the lives of children with autism. By sharing her own successes and missteps, and then downloading all the information and tactics and resources she's found onto these pages, Jayne Lytel has created a useful guidebook to getting all the help your child needs, no matter what.

The downside of a parent's-eye-view manual like this is that it is necessarily subjective. The discussion of treatment types and educational options is colored heavily by the author's own personal experience, and if you've made different choices for your child, you may feel judged or dismissed. That's certainly a feeling I've gotten from texts written by professionals, too -- but somehow, when it's a fellow parent doing it, it hurts more. (I'd personally like to call a moratorium on memoirists describing their viewing of a self-contained special-education classroom like a visit to a circle of hell.)

For the most part, though, getting this material directly from another parent, one who understands all too well the stresses and risks and emotional turmoil, is ideal. The discussion is practical and focused on the things that matter, like how exactly do you get college students to come to your house to work with your child, or what insurance codes you use to get this stuff paid for. It's just the sort of insider information you need when faced with tasks so far outside your previous areas of expertise.

Read an excerpt.



Disclosure: A review copy was provided by the publisher. For more information, please see our Ethics Policy.