Memoirs Special Needs

This is my story. After a lifetime of trying to help everyone else get their lives together, I have finally figured out how to get mine together. I am now 72 years old, semi-retired from a business I created to help young adults with autism function in the world. I live in Mexico with my loving partner. I have fulfilling relationships with my adult children and grandchildren.

Andrew, 8, is autistic and bilingual. He speaks English and Chicken. With words limited by autism, Andrew lives in a fantastic world where chickens talk and superheroes come alive. But when he tells his pet chicken Frightful that his body is trying to kill him, it launches Andrew's family and an entire medical community into a decade-long quest for answers. This beautiful, fierce, and refreshingly honest memoir takes listeners on a mother's journey through the complex landscape of modern medicine to discover the healing bond between a boy and Frightful, the chicken who saves them all.

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.

Desperate to alleviate her son's constant rages and their crushing toll on the family, Donnie Kanter Winokur comes up with an innovative, untested, four-pawed solution: a golden retriever service dog named Chancer. Chancer is specially trained to give Iyal a unique love he desperately needs. But in this true-life tale infused with moments of despair, tenderness, and humor, Chancer turns out to be what the entire family has needed to stay - and grow - together.

In a single moment in time, Garret Frey was transformed from an active and energetic four-year-old to a quadriplegic, ventilator-dependent boy who struggled to make sense of a world in disarray. For seven years, Garret worked with Clinical Psychologist Dr. Karen Pirnot as Garret learned that his mental powers could help compensate for the loss of body function. As I Am details the struggles of Garret's mother to advocate for a "normal" childhood education for her son.

I don't know whether this is the story of Jeff the autistic individual, Jeff the man of God, or Jeff the medical enigma; but I do know it is the story of Jeff, my son. Jeff was so autistic, and yet not autistic at all if you used the textbook definition. He had huge sensory integration issues and appeared to be living inside of himself, but he cared so much for God and other people that their needs always came above his own. He had severe speech issues, only spoke one-word answers, but wrote beautiful papers and prayers when given the Canon communicator.

For Magda Newman, normal was a goal—she wanted her son Nathaniel to be able to play on the playground, swim at the beach, enjoy the moments of childhood that are often taken for granted. But Nathaniel's severe Treacher Collins syndrome—a craniofacial condition—meant that other concerns came first. Could he eat without the aid of a gastrointestinal tube? Could he hear? Would he ever be able to breathe effortlessly?

In Everything Is Going to be K.O. Kaiya Stone writes about her own experiences of living with specific learning difficulties: from struggling at school to being diagnosed with dyslexia and dyspraxia while at university, to performing her own one-woman stand up show inspired by her journey. Always funny and unfailingly honest, Kaiya outlines the frustrations of having SPLDS but also the ways in which they have fuelled her creativity.

We all know the fairy-tale. An everyday girl meets her Prince Charming, they get married, have children and ride off into the sunset. Sadly, this isn't always the case and Christine McGuinness is keen to change the stereotype that marriage, fame and fortune brings an easy and blissful life. This is Christine's first audiobook, where she tells the world her life story for the very first time. While telling her story, Christine was diagnosed with autism, as revealed in this book for the very first time.

Die Autorin ist Mutter eines Jungen im Autismus-Spektrum. Seit einigen Jahren lebt sie mit ihrer Familie in Deutschland, wo sie jeden Tag das Leben aus einer anderen Perspektive kennenlernt – durch das Prisma der Mutterschaft, der Auswanderung und der einzigartigen Welt ihres Sohnes.

When Jenny Lexhed and her husband have their first child Lucas, they are living the dream. They're happily married, they've just bought a house, the company they built together from the ground up is starting to blossom. But with the arrival of their son, a feeling of anxiety slips into their life. What starts as a feeling becomes a conviction.

Lange Zeit fragt sich Angelina Boerger: Bin ich einfach chaotisch und kann nicht gut mit Stress umgehen oder steckt vielleicht mehr dahinter? Mit Ende 20 erhält sie schließlich die Diagnose "AD(H)S im Erwachsenenalter" und ist erleichtert: Endlich hat die Kirmes in ihrem Kopf einen richtigen Namen. Schätzungsweise 2,5 Millionen Erwachsene sind in Deutschland von der Aufmerksamkeitsdefizit-/Hyperaktivitätsstörung, kurz AD(H)S, betroffen. Die Symptome bei Erwachsenen sehen in der Regel anders aus als bei Kindern, und auch das Bild des klassischen "Zappelphilipps" ist längst überholt.

The Underdogs tells the story of Karen Shirk, felled at age 24 by a neuromuscular disease and facing life as a ventilator-dependent, immobile patient, who was turned down by every service dog agency in the country because she was "too disabled". Her nurse encouraged her to tone down the suicidal thoughts, find a puppy, and raise her own service dog. Karen did this, and Ben, a German shepherd, dragged her back into life.

What do you do when you wake up in your mid-40s and realize you've been living a lie your whole life? Do you tell? Or do you keep it to yourself? Laura James found out that she was autistic as an adult, after she had forged a career for herself, married twice and raised four children. Odd Girl Out tracks the year of Laura's life after she receives a definitive diagnosis from her doctor, as she learns that 'different' doesn't need to mean 'less' and how there is a place for all of us, and it's never too late to find it.

At the age of thirty, just as everything was falling into place for him, Lee Pesky died of brain cancer. For his father, Alan, grief came with the realization that he had lost the chance to love Lee as he was—not as he wanted him to be. Ambitious, successful, and always striving for more, Alan had a hard time relating to a son who struggled with learning disabilities at a time when there was little understanding or help for kids who had them. Their relationship was complicated, and now, Lee was gone.

February 29th is a date that comes into existence just once every four years. It is also the birthday of Thais - author Anne-Dauphine Julliand's darling daughter - who died of a genetic disease. Thais lived just shy of her fourth birthday. She had a short life but good one. As this special day is about to reappear on her calendar for the first time since her daughter passed away, Anne-Dauphine struggles with how to mark this momentous occasion. She wants to live fully on this special day: Thais would have been eight years old.

The moving true story of a little girl with Asperger syndrome, controlled and abused by the one person she called her friend. Taylor had always struggled to make friends - she felt 'different'. Taylor never knew her father, and her mother wasn't around much. She just didn't understand people and was alone and scared most of the time. That was until, aged just 11, an older married man called Tom befriended her. She loved having someone who would talk to her, listen to her - a protector. But when he moved away a few months later, she was easy prey.

A sacred journey through grief, healing, and rediscovering life after loss. For 25 years, John and Carla Miller dedicated their lives to loving and caring for their son, Peter Flint Miller—a special needs child who could not walk, talk, or eat without assistance, but whose life overflowed with joy, laughter, and purpose. Every four hours, around the clock, they fed him, changed him, bathed him, dressed him, and prayed over him. And then, one day, it all stopped. Room to Breathe, Room to Grieve is their honest, faith-filled story of what happens after the caregiving ends—after the ...

When Carla Ciccone is diagnosed with ADHD at thirty-nine—an evaluation prompted by the demands of early motherhood—it flips the script on her life. After years of self-blame and self-sabotage, she discovers that her most reviled traits aren’t deep personality flaws, but symptoms of an undiagnosed disorder. And as she goes from being her own biggest hater to someone a bit more compassionate, she notices the growing community of women in the same situation.

An unflinching and luminous memoir that explores a father’s philosophical transformation when he must reconsider the questions what makes us human? and whose life is worth living? Before becoming a father, Chris Gabbard was a fast-track academic finishing his doctoral dissertation at Stanford. A disciple of Enlightenment thinkers, he was a devotee of reason, believed in the reliability of science, and lived by the dictum that an unexamined life is not worth living. That is, until his son August was born.