An excerpt of a column by Marney Rich Keenan in the Detroit News:

What inspired Annie Lubliner Lehmann to write a memoir about raising her autistic 25-year-old son Jonah was not a success story or a happily-ever-after ending. It was not a triumph over silence, a disappearance of the disability through diet or a breakthrough in the obsessive mind.

What inspired her was the power of acceptance: acceptance that Jonah, like thousands of other individuals who suffer from severe autism, will never develop self-help skills, never achieve independence, never say “I love you, Mom” without being coached word for word, and never have a life where every hour in his day is not guided by others.

… The book has drawn accolades from educators and autism experts.

Lehmann’s book, “The Accidental Teacher: Life Lessons from My Silent Son” is self-published through AuthorHouse and available from Amazon.com.

(Detroit News photo)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 19th, 2008 at 8:00 am and is filed under autism, books, personal stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.