Forever Boy: A Mother's Memoir of Autism and Finding Joy

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Kate is a mum who loves her children above all else and wants to do the best for them, and I think that definitely shines through in this book. NATIONAL BESTSELLERWith her popular blog, Finding Cooper's Voice, Kate Swenson has provided hope and comfort for hundreds of thousands of parents of children with Autism. I love it, thank you for putting autism into the words that so many people need to read to understand it just a tiny amount. You will happily look at someone else trainwreck and not even try to find any understanding or empathy. Mary: If you're a parent or an autism professional and enjoy listening to this podcast, you have to come check out my online course and community where we take all of this material and we apply it.

It’s frustrating being neurodiverse and having to deal with medical professionals who act like authorities they aren’t.So it really is a great community for networking, for information and for a lot of support, which is great.

When you have a child with special needs, you have to pick and choose what’s worth fighting for and focus your energies on that. We paid out of pocket for a lot of services that would’ve taken at least a year to get through the bureaucracy.And I mean, any mom, I think that shares on social media, you will get shamed about your kids dirty noses and the sugar they eat and dirty car seats. The process of getting a diagnosis, and the availability of services differs wildly from health region to health region and school district to school district, to say nothing of country to country.

I have the husband with the nerves and patience of a saint while I am spiraling out of control, trying my hardest to just hang on and make it through each day.And you know, all of my listeners know that the spectrum of autism is very wide, and you have described Cooper on the more severe end of the spectrum. And I think we start to realize that stuff's really important for things like funding and helping, but it's kind of OK to tuck that down a little bit and just focus on our child as who they are because all those diagnoses get kind of heavy. For Turn Autism Around, I got it Thanksgiving week of 2019 and I also had an agent, but I had heard that the publishing world pretty much shuts down from Thanksgiving till February.

But through hard work, resilience and personal growth, she would come to learn that Cooper wasn’t the one who needed to change. Goals for Cooper, I really want him to be able to go to restaurants, fly on an airplane and go to his brother's sports games. I’ve felt doubly different, being neurodivergent myself, understanding my son in a less common way, but feeling too different than other autism moms who say things that unintentionally become personally insulting to me.And you know, when you said about high-Functioning, I've done the video, blogs and podcasts on high functioning versus low functioning, which is now taboo. If I were to describe Cooper’s toddler years with one word, it would be lonely, a word that I didn’t know before having a baby could be associated with motherhood. Her mission is to create a safe space for families of children and teens with special needs to come together and laugh, cry and support each other. Kate Swenson has pulled the curtain back to show first-hand the challenges of life with a child with severe autism. At ten months old, Holly Marie was brought to the door of a church by three barefoot women in white robes and head coverings.