Some of the books I read:
Let Me Hear Your Voice: A Family’s Triumph over Autism by Catherine Maurice
*Nobody, Nowhere by Donna Williams
*Emergence: Labeled Autistic by Temple Grandin
*A Slant of Sun: One Child’s Courage by Beth Kephart
*An Anthropologist on Mars by Oliver Sacks
Maverick Mind by Cheri Florance
A Parent’s Guide to Autism: Answers to the Most Common Questions by Charles A. Hart
The World of the Autistic Child: Understanding and Treating Autistic Spectrum Disorders by Bryna Siegel
Handbook of autism and Pervasive Developmental Disorders by Donald J. Cohen & Anne M. Donnellan, ed.
Biological Treatments for Autism and PDD by William Shaw, Bernard Rimland, Pamela Scott, Karyn Seroussi, Lisa Lewis & Bruce Semon
Special Diets for Special Kids by Lisa Lewis
*Sensory Integration and the Child by Jean Ayres
Teach Me Language: A language manual for children with autism, Asperger’s syndrome and related developmental disorders by Sabrina K. Freeman, Lorelei Dake & Isaac Tamir, illustrator
*Engaging Autism by Stanley Greenspan
*The Child with Special Needs by Stanley Greenspan
*Denotes books that were very helpful and continue to be
When I wasn’t reading books on autism and canvassing the internet reading the endless array of therapies being offered, each with it’s own little morsel of hope attached – perhaps this will be the thing that she responds to – I was scheduling Emma’s early intervention therapists. There were often 7 therapists in a single day, coming and going.
I look back on that period and wonder what it must have been like for Emma. How odd it must have seemed to her, but she took it all in stride. There were a few exceptions, the days when I would sit outside her bedroom door during her therapy, leaning my head against the wall listening to her scream as she tried to leave the room, but the therapist would patiently tell her she could not until they had finished and I would cry, fighting the urge to let her out – all that separated us was the four inch wall of her bedroom. I remember feeling that everything I thought I knew as a mother – all my maternal instincts were useless.
Emma's Hope Book 