Memoirs Special Needs

More than four hundred abandoned suitcases filled with patients’ belongings were found when Willard Psychiatric Center closed in 1995 after 125 years of operation. They are skillfully examined here and compared to the written record to create a moving—and devastating—group portrait of twentieth-century American psychiatric care.

When Schuyler Rummel-Hudson was 18 months old, a question about her lack of speech by her pediatrician set in motion a journey that continues today. When she was diagnosed with bilateral perisylvian polymicrogyria (an extremely rare neurological disorder), her parents were given a name for the monster that had been stalking them from doctor to doctor, and from despair to hope, and back again.

Until two years of age, Craig and Samantha’s son Connor was just like other kids - playful, verbal, and affectionate. Then everything changed. He stopped talking, displayed behavioral problems, and withdrew into his own world. The official diagnosis - autism. Faced with seemingly insurmountable odds, Craig and Samantha refused to believe a meaningful life for Connor was impossible. God confirmed their faith by revealing to Craig that Connor would one day touch the lives of thousands of people around the world.

When Jessica's son Trey was diagnosed with autism, and she was learning to navigate new life situations, she searched for books written by people who were also living through it. The only books she could find were written by doctors. That was fine, but she was longing for a connection with someone who could relate to her family's issues. For a few years, she continued to search and was not successful at finding anything. That's when she knew that one day, she wanted to write a faith-based book about her family's experiences with severe nonverbal autism and the world of special needs.

One morning, Tophs, Taylor Harris’ round-cheeked, lively 22-month-old, wakes up listless, only lifting his head to gulp down water. She rushes Tophs to the doctor, ignoring the part of herself, trained by years of therapy for generalized anxiety disorder, that tries to whisper that she’s overreacting. But at the hospital, her maternal instincts are confirmed: something is wrong with her boy, and Taylor’s life will never be the same.

Despite being a winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 2008, Philip Schultz could never shake the feeling of being exiled to the “dummy class” in school, where he was largely ignored by his teachers and peers and not expected to succeed. Not until many years later, when his oldest son was diagnosed with dyslexia, did Schultz realize that he suffered from the same condition.

The true story of a single mother's love and perseverance, her son's autism diagnosis with its challenges and gifts, and their triumph together over life's toughest obstacles.

One morning, Jenny McCarthy sensed something was wrong and ran into her two-year-old son Evan's room to discover he was having a seizure. In that moment, Jenny was thrust into the midst of a medical odyssey. After numerous misdiagnoses and many harrowing, life-threatening episodes, Evan was finally diagnosed with autism. Jenny didn't know what to do next and found herself alone, without any resources except for her determination to help her son.

Jadie never spoke. She never laughed, or cried, or uttered any sound. Despite efforts to reach her, Jadie remained locked in her own troubled world - until one remarkable teacher persuaded her to break her self-imposed silence. Nothing in all of Torey Hayden's experience could have prepared her for the shock of what Jadie told her - a story too horrendous for Torey's professional colleagues to acknowledge.

His name was Kevin but his keepers called him Zoo Boy. He didn't talk. He hid under tables and surrounded himself with a cage of chairs. He hadn't been out of the building in the four years since he'd come in. He was afraid of water and wouldn't take a shower. He was afraid to be naked, to change his clothes. He was nearly 16. Desperate to see change in the boy, the staff of Kevin's adolescent treatment center hired Hayden. As Hayden read to him and encouraged him to read, crawling down into his cage of chairs with him, Kevin talked.

A dramatic and remarkable narrative of an extraordinary teacher's determination, from the author of the Sunday Times bestsellers The Tiger's Child and One Child. Torey Hayden faced six emotionally troubled kids no other teacher could handle - three recent arrivals from battle-torn Northern Ireland, badly traumatized by the horrors of war; an eleven-year-old boy, who only knew life inside an institution; an excitable girl, aggressive and sexually precocious at the age of eight; and seven-year-old Leslie, perhaps the most hopeless of all, unresponsive and unable to speak.

A Story of Unwavering Love, Unthinkable Loss, and Unshakable Faith For 25 years, Pastor John E. Miller and his wife, Carla, devoted their lives to caring for their son, Peter Flint Miller—a child with special needs who depended on them for everything. Every four hours, every single day, their love took the form of feeding, bathing, dressing, and comforting their son. But on March 8, 2025, Peter took his final breath, and their world changed forever. In Grace in the Hard Places, John and Carla share their raw, personal journey through caregiving, grief, and the faith that sustained them. ...

Clem Bastow grew up feeling like she’d missed a key memo on human behaviour. She found the unspoken rules of social engagement confusing, arbitrary and often stressful. Friendships were hard, relationships harder and the office was a fluorescent-lit nightmare of anxiety. It wasn’t until Clem was diagnosed as autistic, at age 36, that things clicked into focus. Clem reflects as an autistic adult on her formative experiences as an undiagnosed young person, from the asphalt playground of St Joseph's Primary School in Melbourne to working as an entertainment journalist in Hollywood.

Misfit, truant, delinquent. John Robison was never a model child, and he wasn’t a model dad either. Diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome at the age of 40, he approached fatherhood as a series of logic puzzles and practical jokes. When his son, Cubby, asked, “Where did I come from?” John said he’d bought him at the Kid Store and that the salesman had cheated him by promising Cubby would “do all chores”. He read electrical engineering manuals to Cubby at bedtime.

For an autistic little girl, the world can be hard to navigate. Her behavior wasn't always understood by the world, and she didn't always understand the behavior of the world. But like a touch of cayenne pepper, Kyan brings a special spice to life!

Special Heart is a deeply touching personal story told through the eyes of a journalist as he faces the most daunting challenge in life - far more frightening than reporting from battlefields, infinitely more momentous than interviewing newsmakers of the day: caring for his critically ill newborn son. Baier reflects on past challenges as he looks forward with hope, chronicling the steps on his path to national prominence as a television anchor, as well as his unexpected journey into the world of pediatric cardiac disease.

Henry Markram is the Elon Musk of neuroscience, the man behind the billion-dollar Blue Brain Project to build a supercomputer model of the brain. He has set the goal of decoding all disturbances of the mind within a generation. This quest is personal for him. The driving force behind his grand ambition has been his son Kai, who has autism. Raising Kai made Henry Markram question all that he thought he knew about neuroscience, and then inspired his groundbreaking research that would upend the conventional wisdom about autism, expressed in his now-famous theory of Intense World Syndrome.

When climate activist Greta Thunberg was 11, her parents Malena and Svante, and her little sister Beata, were facing a crisis in their own home. Greta had stopped eating and speaking, and her mother and father had reconfigured their lives to care for her. Desperate and searching for answers, her parents discovered what was at the heart of Greta’s distress: her imperiled future on a rapidly heating planet. Steered by Greta’s determination to understand the truth and generate change, they began to see the deep connections between their own suffering and the planet’s.

In Love Fiercely, a Catholic father offers prayerful insight into the experience of raising and loving his eldest daughter. Elizabeth Bodoh is nearly blind, nonverbal, suffers from epilepsy and cerebral palsy, and loves music. She enjoys cuddles and eating. A shunt manages the fluid on her brain, and a wheelchair helps her family move her.

Unlocked begins with a vivid depiction of the author's life with her autistic son, Ben. Feelings of isolation and self-hate and even moments of hatred toward her own child in response to his behaviors, as well as the impact on her marriage and younger daughter, impel her to seek solutions for his condition. Through years of trial and error, Susan eventually discovers methods that bring about radical improvement in Ben.