Gravity Pulls You In : Perspectives on Parenting Children on the Autism Spectrum

by Anderson, Kyra

• ISBN13: 9781606130025
• ISBN10: 1606130021
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-02-26
• Publisher: Woodbine House

Summary

View the universe of autism-its marvels, chaos, and life-changing impacts-through the eyes of the contributors to Gravity Pulls You In. In 33 essays and poems, mothers and fathers raising children on the autism spectrum explore their lives in the context of autism's own special gravity, discovering what's important and what they find centering. Their slice-of-life depictions are a refreshing departure from the usual diagnosis/grief/acceptance arc of many autism accounts. Readers are invited into contributors' lives, where they're sure to find an attitude, a circumstance, an epiphany they can relate to. Book jacket.

Author Biography

Kyra Anderson is a writer and homeschooling mother living in western Massachusetts with her husband, children's book author and illustrator, David Milgrim and their son, Wyatt, referred to by the nickname Fluffy. Her work has appeared in 100 Hats, Tiny Lights, and Bust Out Magazine. She's been cataloguing life with Fluffy on her blog, This Mom dot com, for the past five years. Her memoir is awaiting a home. Vicki Forman is the author of This Lovely Life: A Memoir of Premature Motherhood, Winner of the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference Bakeless Nonfiction Prize and published in July 2009 by Mariner Books/ Houghton Mifflin . Her work has appeared in the Seneca Review and the Santa Monica Review as well as the anthologies, Love You to Pieces: Creative Writers on Raising a Child with Special Needs, This Day: Dairies from American Women, and Literary Mama: Reading for the Maternally Inclined. She blogs at http://www.vickiforman.com/ ôSpeak Softly and Carry the Proverbial Baton Grand.ö She lives outside Los Angeles with her husband and daughter.

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. v
Preface	p. xi
Notes from Autism's Edges
Label Everything	p. 3
Notes from Autism's Edges	p. 5
Guilt, Denial, and Videotape	p. 11
Birthdays	p. 23
Finally at Three: Two Words Put Together	p. 27
Middle Earth	p. 29
How to Talk to an Autistic Child	p. 35
A Child Blinks	p. 37
The Real World of Autism: The Refrigerator Mother Club	p. 43
Watching My Son Watch Sleeping Beauty	p. 47
Sometimes, Never	p. 49
String Theory
String Theory	p. 61
Evolution of a Fairy	p. 69
Live via Satellite: A Parenting Journey	p. 79
Flood Plain	p. 85
The Wages of Autism	p. 93
Proverbs 13:24	p. 97
No Pity	p. 99
The Stone	p. 115
And the Shoes Will Take Us There
As Great as Trees	p. 119
Other Child, Other Mother	p. 125
100 Percent	p. 135
Navigating Autism	p. 141
Driving Down the Road...and Growing Up with My Asperger's Child	p. 147
Heart-Shaped Rock	p. 151
You're Adopting Whom?	p. 157
Oh, the Community	p. 161
The Mother at the Swings	p. 163
And the Shoes Will Take Us There in Spite of the Circumference	p. 167
To Persevere	p. 169
The Visit	p. 173
Is There Anything Else We Should Know?	p. 181
The Family Gangsta	p. 189
Contributors	p. 195
Editors	p. 202
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