Customer Reviews

Children with Autism: A Developmental Perspective (The Developing Child)

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I cannot disagree with the previous review more. As a parent of a child with autism I find this book the worst of its kind: it proports to straddle the fence between "popular" and "scientific," never really being useful in either venue.

The authors repeatedly refer to those with autism with dated terminology such as "the disturbed child," although their central point is that one with autism is disturbed about relatively little. Moreover, after stating that 70% of people with autism are mentally retarded, they proceed to use the term "autis"m as a monolith, comparing it to norms for both "normally" developing children and mentally retarded children, never acknoweldging or problematizing that some autistic folks are one and some are the other.

This highly-trumped "developmental approach" seems dated at best. All these folks did here was construct a norm and repeatedly assert that autistic folks are lacking and different. Even as someone new to this field, I found the book chillingly callous, oddly out of touch and cold, and terribly dated.

I would much more strongly refer readers to more nuanced and carefully constructed studies such as Shirley Cohen's Targeting Autism.

This book give a very thurough, indepth description of autism. It is relatively unbiased, and very accurate in both science and life. The development perspective give an excellent over view of autistic development and the nature of this very development disorder. It give information relavent to all levels of functioning and all stages of life, and does a great job a present autism specific characteristic, as well as comorbid features of mental retardation and ADD. It is especially good in dealing with higher-fuctioning autism -- something often ignored in favor of more negative views. I would strongly recommend this book as a new-comers first source of information about autism.