I have mixed feelings about this book. I'm thrilled the author recovered her son. Good for her! It's good to read of another child who has recovered from autism because for so long all we've heard is that autism is untreatable. That's not true. Autism is treatable. There are a lot of things that can be done for autistic children to improve the quality of their lives; and there are other autistic children who will become far more functional and high-functioning with therapies. There is a whole generation of autistic children growing up who will go to college and have independent lives. However, I didn't completely enjoy this book because the author can be condescending. She has a rating scale for moms of children with autism. At the top are parents who will spends hundreds of thousands of dollars to do any and all treatments. However, she fails to recognize that others aren't as fortunate as she. She has resources at her disposal that others don't. Her husband is an attorney. They have a vacation cabin they sell to raise money for the son's treatments. They have the education, friends, connections and her husband's legal skills to fight for all the educational services their child needs. They have access to doctors and therapists who are skilled. They are also lucky that their child is quite high functioning to begin with. The boy is verbal and quite responsive to various therapies.

The author could have been much more detailed about the therapies they tried. She mentions things in passing without providing much more information. I think that parents out there would like to more about the various biomedical treatments that helped. This book is a good starting point, but people should read other recovery books as well because this one book won't give everything you need to know.

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I liked this book at first, but the author became very irritating, very quickly. She forgets that the target audience is most likely parents of children with autism, and she explains everything in mind numbing detail, and frankly, I think that she is the most egotistical autism mom whom I have ever read about. She spends a paragraph talking about a food alergy that she discovers her boy has, but an entire chapter detailing a fight that she has with her husband oversomething stupid. Another time she goes on about the "cocktail dress, and heels" that she was wearing at the time of her son's disappearance. (hello?) Plus, she whines about being so tired and having to invest so much energy into hiring people to take care of her boy for her, so that she can run to the grocery store without him. Yeah, she totally bugs. Furthermore, I'm amazed that she even named the book, "A Real Boy", It must have been the publisher that talked her out of, "The Greatest Autism Mom on the Face of God's Green Earth. . . Oh Yeah, and Her Son, Too". She even has a rating system, "How good of an autism mom are you?" And she judges the moms that have taken her under their wing and helped her out, and she suggests you rate yourself as well. Yeah, that's what I need. More criticism.
Sorry, getting a little carried away here. IMO- Skip this one.

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Good book with a lot of relevant inforation. BUT...written in a way that comes accross very self-indulgent and arrogant.

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I am not an autism parent, but I do know of a couple of families with autistic sons & I wanted a bit more "enlightenment" on the subject. This is a good book & a fast read, although I understand from 1 of the autism mommies, doesn't apply to every situation.

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