(Jumping in to the middle of a conversation, if I may:)
Although I haven't really read them, my impression is that there's a (somewhat older?) subgenre of autism parent memoir which is "heroic mom stumbles upon the miracle intervention that cures kid's autism", I think the standard instance being /Let Me Hear Your Name/ by Catherine Maurice. (Where the "miracle intervention" may be a false positive because some autistic kids have symptoms that improve rapidly for reasons we don't really understand.)
That was the sort of thing that the description of this book reminded me of. And although I'm inclined to agree with the book that genetic/biological factors are important, the analogy to of "demon possession" does make me bit uncomfortable in the same way that likening autism to demon possession would -- though I'm glad to hear that this handles things in a thoughtful way.
That said, maybe having midly problematic attitudes about mental health is a normal thing, and does not make one into a *terrible parent who is at fault for all the children's problems*.
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Date: 2017-08-05 04:17 am (UTC)Although I haven't really read them, my impression is that there's a (somewhat older?) subgenre of autism parent memoir which is "heroic mom stumbles upon the miracle intervention that cures kid's autism", I think the standard instance being /Let Me Hear Your Name/ by Catherine Maurice. (Where the "miracle intervention" may be a false positive because some autistic kids have symptoms that improve rapidly for reasons we don't really understand.)
That was the sort of thing that the description of this book reminded me of. And although I'm inclined to agree with the book that genetic/biological factors are important, the analogy to of "demon possession" does make me bit uncomfortable in the same way that likening autism to demon possession would -- though I'm glad to hear that this handles things in a thoughtful way.
That said, maybe having midly problematic attitudes about mental health is a normal thing, and does not make one into a *terrible parent who is at fault for all the children's problems*.