Secondhand Autism

It is autism awareness month. For me and my family ever day is autism awareness month. That's right, each day is a month. My youngest brother, Scott, who is now 25 is autistic. Autism is a pervasive developmental disorder, typically it manifests in social isolation and heavy impairment of communication ability. Each year seems to bring more attention to autism with increasingly startling statistics of diagnosis rates. They now claim it is 1 in 50 children who are diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder. In this spectrum there are several different disorders. They all now bear the heading of autism, but they are not all autism. There is a difference and the increased diagnostic rates are a result of an out of control medical community and parenting community and school community looking for excuses and fast treatments (drugs) to battle socialization issues or to force all children to be the same. Personally, I think the autism "professionals" who support the spectrum need some autism awareness in their lives.

Anyway, I didn't come here to chastise or complain, although here is as good a place as any to do so. I came here to advertise my new book Secondhand Autism which is available for Amazon's Kindle eBook platform and as a trade paperback through Amazon affiliate CreateSpace. The book provides an inside look at the effect of autism on the family, on my family. Every instance of autism is different, so is every family. While there is similarity between experiences, this book is in no way an objective report of what to expect from a diagnosis of autistic disorder or anything like that. It is a case study, but not even that, it is what we have dealt with having autism in our family.