A Parent's Guide to High-Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder: How to Meet the Challenges and Help Your Child Thrive Second Edition

Part of being a parent is to continuously search for answers for one thing or another. When our 6 yr old son was diagnosed with HFASD, we were shocked and left searching for answers. The evaluation report recommended this book and it provided many of the answers and guidance we needed to get started on treatments, schools, strategies, etc., and also what to expect and plan for in the future. It's proving to be an invaluable resource at a time when intervention is time critical and just getting started is itself a struggle.The first part of the book goes over HFASD - how it presents, how it affects children and families, diagnosis, causes, treatments, etc. The description of how HFASD presents and how it affects socialization, education, behavior, etc. describes much of what we were seeing in our son. The second part of the book is an invaluable guide on living with HFASD that covers methods and strategies. The content is suburb and is helping us to become informed, make decisions, and develop approaches and roadmaps. The section on education and schools is particularly helpful at the moment given the state of our current school district.I'll add that one of the heart breaking facets of dealing with HFASD is the exposure to other kids with similar or worse problems who aren't getting the help they need, live in bad environments, and/or don't have good or informed adult advocates. I've been recommending this book to our son's doctors, teachers, school, library etc. in the hopes that it can have an impact on these cases.

Such an amazing book that really explains a lot!!

This book is very helpful for helping to understand a child with Asperger’s.

This book is a good introduction to what the Autism Spectrum is and why it occurs. It is a good read for someone who may have had a family member recently diagnosed and knows little about this subject. It gives information on education and discipline that is very useful and explains how to go about getting a correct diagnosis which is very important. It also explains how to become an advocate for your family member in making sure he or she gets the best treatment to help them manage their behavior. It gave me a whole new perspective on this condition.

Wow this book was probably the most helpful book I’ve read. Most books are not so specific with practical help. But this one was. It gave me real ideas and tools to try. I highly recommend this to anyone with a child that has high functioning autism

This is a book every parent with a child on the Autism Spectrum needs to have in their library. The authors write in a clear, concise style that gives you the information you need without having to dig for it.The book is divided into two parts. Part One discusses what Autism Spectrum Disorder is, how it is diagnosed, possible causes, and treatments. Part Two gives you the day-to-day advice and practical information about helping children with autism from early childhood through adulthood. If you find the material in Part One too theoretical to follow, or you are most interested in learning something to help you and your child right away, you can start with Part Two. I started with Part Two, since the possible causes of my son's autism, while interesting, was a case of "water under the bridge".

Well written for a beginner to the field of Autism Spectrum, this book is a great reference for what to expect and allows the novice to realize that this is so much more common than one might imagine and 20 years ago when I went through this process with another child, there was nothing out there compared to what there is this time around. The frustration comes in finding parent support groups in small communities. They just don't exist and parents are far too busy with all that is going on in the new developments of their lives along with full time jobs and other children, to begin a group. This book does not help in knowing where to go for supportive parent resources as much as it is helpful in diagnostic and clinical resources. All three elements are necessary but the third is sorely neglected.

Good general advise. Nothing new that I hadn’t already heard. pg243 was a very weird page talking about teaching ASD teens about masturbating and even gives an example of a mom giving her son nude pictures to do so...Very weird and disturbing advice on that front.