autism

Growing Up on the Spectrum: A Guide to Life, Love, and Learning for Teens and Young Adults with Autism and Asperger’s is the second book that Dr. Lynn Kern Koegel and I have written together.  Our first was Overcoming Autism: Finding the Answers, Strategies, and Hope That Can Transform a Child’s Life, and we’re incredibly proud of how many people have told us the book has been a source of information and comfort to them.

My oldest son was diagnosed with autism when he was two and a half and at some point along the way, a friend suggested I go see Dr. Koegel who was running a clinic at the University of Santa Barbara with her husband Dr. Robert Koegel.  (That clinic has since been named after them: it’s now the Koegel Autism Center.)  The story of our first meeting is described in Overcoming Autism: basically my husband and I were blown away by Lynn’s personal brilliance and by the effectiveness of their pivotal response teaching behavioral approach. 

Thanks to her guidance (and the hard work of many other wonderful professionals), our son is doing great today.  He’s an amazing kid and a fully mainstreamed high school junior who’s currently trying to figure out which colleges to apply to.

Back when he was still young, Lynn discovered that I was a writer (a rather unfulfilled writer at the time) and asked if I could help them rewrite their clinic brochure.  I did.  A year or so later, she asked me if I’d have any interested in co-authoring an entire book with her.  I did.  Together we wrote Overcoming Autism.  The expertise in the book is all hers, but I was able to add some personal experiences as the mother of a kid on the spectrum and help with the general writing and presentation.  Read the rest of this entry »