# A must-read book if you deal with autism or simply want to understand



## jwithnell (Nov 24, 2015)

If you have any interaction with autism, NeuroTribes (2015) should be at the top of your reading list. I have some caveats which I'll get to, but aside from Tony Attwood, Temple Grandin, and the Out of Sync child series, I've previously had very little to recommend. 

At the core, NeuroTribes sets out the history of autism. This context is extremely helpful to understand both the hysteria that surfaces in mass media and to understand the biases in intervention that exist to this day. (I had noticed after age eight or so, almost all therapies "timed out" for our son Samuel. The history has resulted in interventions for autism that are almost entirely focused upon those first few years of life when the brain still has plasticity -- a notion that has been entirely debunked in the rest of the neurological world.) Be forewarned that the details of the eugenics movement and later (surprisingly close to today) the punitive conditioning methods (BF Skinner anyone?) can be quite disturbing.

The author, Steve Silberman, has a journalist's eye for detail and storytelling and takes what could be a dry set of facts and makes them very readable. At 500+ pages, the book is quite long and practically begs for a shorter treatment. Strong points from the author: his advocacy to remove autism from the psycho--babble. (Freud and the pseudo-science he precipitated in the US was appalling for me to read.) He recognizes autistics can have full-blown personalities and extraordinary talents. He removes the stigma from parents. He insists that we listen to adult, and young adult, autistics -- sometimes there are good reasons for odd behavior. (I briefly corresponded with a young autistic believer before Samuel talked much. His observations were quite helpful, and to this day we sit at the front of our church on his recommendation.) Silberman also shreds the myths that circulate on the internet. (Vaccinations? The original study was based on the self-selection of about eight families, many of which were already anti-vaccine. About half the kids were already medically determined to have neurological problems. Those who seemed to react mostly did not do so "overnight" as is so often cited.)

The clearest problem with the book comes from insisting that those with autism are their own kind of normal. Without understanding the devastation of the fall, autistic thought and "neurotypical" thinking are viewed by the author as equal. (He doesn't says so, but this is also entirely consistent with an evolutionary perspective.) Advocacy should shift, he and representatives of the community insist, to making life better for autistic adults and away from a "cure" and treatment. He warns the medical approach favors the neurotypical over a different, but totally equally way of life. Not surprisingly, ties are made between this normative approach and the deaf community (among which are those who refuse to accommodate the hearing world) and the gay etc. community. He even sees this in civil rights terms.

This book fills an important, though non-Christian gap in the writings on autism. So many authors advocate specific approaches because it appeared to work for their children or in their classroom. Even in Christian circles, parent authors advocate approaches largely because of their own success which they then cite in semi-theological terms. I've become so wary of most writers, forums, and advocacy groups, that I've largely only trusted those who have mainstream medical credibility, or Christians I know personally who have dealt with neurological difficulties in children.

I am SO grateful God guided our family away from the craziness, and it is only by His grace that we did. It made intuitive sense for us to not allow Samuel (or parent therapy for the autistic as is encouraged in some circles) to dominate every moment in the family. It made sense that special diets (never proven at any level in science) would only reinforce his differences and make life for the family more difficult. And though insurance companies are often dead wrong, venturing into expensive "treatments" that were not considered medically valid seemed foolish to us. (As it turns out, one of the major, alternative, medical testing companies also sells huge volumes of expensive mega-vitamins and chelating-therapies, none of which have ever received peer-reviewed or double-blind testing.)


----------



## KMK (Nov 24, 2015)

Thanks for the review. We will have to check it out.


----------

