Many Faces of Autism

In my neighborhood there are at least 10 people who have autistic children different ages. All of them are beautiful boys. I am a special education teacher and even if I do not practice my profession I am fascinated with this mysterious brain disorder. In Psychology Today for August 2013 I found a promotion of a beautiful book “Love in the Time of Autism”. Let me quote word by word what makes this book so special.

“Raising autistic child puts enormous stress on couples, but it’s not a marriage killer,” says Alysia Abbott, who writes about these couples in “Love in the Time of Autism.” “There are some couples who, in fact, grow stronger.” As the parents of an autistic son and an unaffected daughter, Abbott and her husband continue to endure the challenges – emotional, therapeutic, legal – of raising a child with special needs. She hopes that after reading about parents who have faced similar stresses, “couples can give themselves permission to say, “This is really hard.” Abbott’s memoir, Fairyland, about her father, Steve Abbott – a writer and activist who died of AIDS – was published in June.

The conception behind the photography for “Love in the Time of Autism” – a surreal visualization of the impact the disorder has on marriages – took a concentrated, even mathematical effort to bring to fruition. “I wanted to treat it with sensitivity,” says Dallas-based photographer Geof Kern. “I didn’t want to make the picture look silly,” he says, a potential danger in depicting a larger-than-real-life child or her pacifier. The perceptual illusions, which were set up in the process of shooting, required a clever arrangement of objects and people. A giant pacifier, for example, required the use of a miniature sofa. The veteran conceptual photographer’s work has also appeared in GQ, Real Simple, and Flaunt.

Book is not published yet. I will keep my eye on the date of its publishing, because I think that everyone should read this book in order to learn how deep parental love is. That will also help you understand the life of people who raised children with any kind of disabilities, mental and physical challenges. 

Additional bonus will be the photographies. Check Geof Kern's collection on the Internet. It is breath taking!!!!

May you all love your children no matter what!