The Resilient Parent: Everyday Wisdom for Life with Your Exceptional Child, by Mantu Joshi, is a series of short essays on raising a child (or children) with special needs. At 150 pages, it's very approachable and easy to read.
Resilience is an important term in psychology when it comes to people with disabilities and those who care about them. It's the word given to the capacity for people to get up after getting knocked down (metaphorically or otherwise). People who experience a lot of difficulties, failures, and trauma, but still keep getting up to continue fighting the good fight, have a lot of resilience. This is a particularly important trait for parents of autistic people, and in truth, autistic people ourselves.
This book, therefore, aims to teach you how to develop this quality. But not in a "self help, do these 10 steps and you'll be better!" fashion. The author simply has a series of tips, observations, questions, and insights to offer his readers. I found the content simple, honest, thoughtful, and useful. It was also extremely brief and to the point, which I'm very sure was on purpose.
The type of parents for whom this book is written don't necessarily have a lot of time to peruse its pages and contemplate long, complicated sentences and complex ideas... so there aren't things like that. Each essay is 2-4 pages long, containing a snippet of story from the author's life caring for his children and some thoughtful but concise remarks and ideas. And every essay ends with a thought or question for your own life, which is meant to help you use the ideas in the essay in your own life. Basically, the book is meant to be accessible and usable by any parent, but especially the ones without much time and energy to spare.
The book reminded me strongly of the daily devotional guides that my parents would read after dinner every night. There would be a Bible passage (spiritual inspiration), followed by some concise discussion of that idea, followed by a "how can you apply this to your life?" paragraph. This is perhaps an apt comparison, as the author has pastoral training and is no doubt very familiar with such books.
As an autistic non-parental adult, I found much of the content of this book still useful to my life, albeit after twisting it around a bit to fit my current situation. I don't have kids, but I do have trouble with myself and my mood sometimes, and my spouse will naturally never be able to read my mind... in addition to having challenges of his own. Some of the advice here can be made to fit my life, even though it's tailored for a very different one.
I feel like a lot of this advice would be valid advice for any parent, regardless of whether the child has special needs. Actually, one section of the book talked about how parents of special needs children have it a lot worse than most parents, but you do still have to respect that most parents still find their neurotypical children challenging. And admittedly, raising kids is a challenging task, regardless of whether they have difficulties and disabilities out of the ordinary.
Resilience is an important term in psychology when it comes to people with disabilities and those who care about them. It's the word given to the capacity for people to get up after getting knocked down (metaphorically or otherwise). People who experience a lot of difficulties, failures, and trauma, but still keep getting up to continue fighting the good fight, have a lot of resilience. This is a particularly important trait for parents of autistic people, and in truth, autistic people ourselves.
This book, therefore, aims to teach you how to develop this quality. But not in a "self help, do these 10 steps and you'll be better!" fashion. The author simply has a series of tips, observations, questions, and insights to offer his readers. I found the content simple, honest, thoughtful, and useful. It was also extremely brief and to the point, which I'm very sure was on purpose.
The type of parents for whom this book is written don't necessarily have a lot of time to peruse its pages and contemplate long, complicated sentences and complex ideas... so there aren't things like that. Each essay is 2-4 pages long, containing a snippet of story from the author's life caring for his children and some thoughtful but concise remarks and ideas. And every essay ends with a thought or question for your own life, which is meant to help you use the ideas in the essay in your own life. Basically, the book is meant to be accessible and usable by any parent, but especially the ones without much time and energy to spare.
The book reminded me strongly of the daily devotional guides that my parents would read after dinner every night. There would be a Bible passage (spiritual inspiration), followed by some concise discussion of that idea, followed by a "how can you apply this to your life?" paragraph. This is perhaps an apt comparison, as the author has pastoral training and is no doubt very familiar with such books.
As an autistic non-parental adult, I found much of the content of this book still useful to my life, albeit after twisting it around a bit to fit my current situation. I don't have kids, but I do have trouble with myself and my mood sometimes, and my spouse will naturally never be able to read my mind... in addition to having challenges of his own. Some of the advice here can be made to fit my life, even though it's tailored for a very different one.
I feel like a lot of this advice would be valid advice for any parent, regardless of whether the child has special needs. Actually, one section of the book talked about how parents of special needs children have it a lot worse than most parents, but you do still have to respect that most parents still find their neurotypical children challenging. And admittedly, raising kids is a challenging task, regardless of whether they have difficulties and disabilities out of the ordinary.
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