TITLE: Autism Out Loud: Life with a Child on the Spectrum, from Diagnosis to Young Adulthood (Kindle Edition)
AUTHOR: Swenson, Kate, Cariello, Carrie and Wood, Adrian
SUBJECT AREA: Autism-Parenting
PUBLISSHER: Park Row (for Hardback Edition)
PUBLICATION DATE: 2025
NUMBER OF PAGES: 304
Among all the parent narratives I have read and reviewed. I especially enjoyed this book as I had read Kate Swenson’s book Finding Cooper’s Voice and Carrie Carriello’s book What Color is Monday, so it was like reading stories written by people I had already become acquainted with.
The book starts with a chapter introducing the three contributors starting with Kate Swenson, from the Midwest, who describes her children: Sawyer, Harbor, the Cheerful One, Wynnie and Cooper who is more significantly affected by autism and is nonverbal. The next writer is Adrian Wood, from North Carolina, who lost a brother to cancer and has three children: Thomas, the oldest, Russell, Blair and Amos who is the youngest at ten with autism. The third author is Carrie, whose son Jack was also diagnosed with ASD, but with help and support went on to a college program.
The mothers tell the story of their marriages and their children each with their own personality. Then, the three moms delve into the nitty-gritty starting with that all-important diagnosis that hurts no matter how old the child is or how happy the home life can be. There are feelings of bewilderment, pain and dismay as these brave women face a new reality of a child who wasn’t what they were expecting and now had to forge a new path. In Chapter 3, The New Normal, Kate, Adrian and Carrie have had to find their way through the thicket of autism information and lowered expectations of a child who may not speak or live on his own and one can feel the pain and confusion as they try to find their way. Their feelings are raw, and the writing is painfully honest. There are no stories of Temple Grandin style heroes here, just children struggling and parents looking for a crystal ball into the future when there isn’t one.
Chapter 4 focuses on how anxiety colored Cooper’s responses to the world; his mother discovered that he would engage in challenging behavior as a response to an anxiety producing situations that proved to be an important insight. Subsequent chapters include how having typically developing siblings affects how a parent of a child with autism would feel; it’s easy to compare that child with the autistic child and longing for that child to be like his siblings. The authors also discuss the difficulties with building a community and the sheer isolation many parents of ASD children feel; being in a Facebook group and writing blogs has been a real boon for these parents. There is also the issue of grief when a parent finds out that their child may never be a Temple Grandin or the next Einstein, but someone with an unknown future ahead and not what they expected. This was an especially poignant chapter, as it reflects society’s continuing lack of understanding and acceptance of people with autism, especially if they are nonverbal like Cooper. Other issues include caregiving vs. motherhood, education, what kind of autism do they have, as well as autism and the family, different ways autistic people can succeed and what the future can hold. This is an unflinching view of autism from the parental front lines. Though these young men have significant challenges, I’m rooting for each of them and wish them all much success in the future.