Elijah's Cup: A Family's Journey into the Community and Culture of High-Functioning Autism and Asperger's Syndrome

2007

Jill Varney
[email protected]
603-862-4320

Elijah, Valerie and Ben Paradiz's only child, had some developmental problems in his early years, which were diagnosed as epilepsy. Yet the pressures of caring for the boy gradually drove Valerie and Ben apart, and they finally separated, which increased the demands on Valerie. Still, no one mentioned autism until live-in sitter Sharron Loree and Elijah's third pediatric neurologist both suggested it. Sharron, herself diagnosed with Asperger's, was able to meet Elijah on common ground. Furthermore, she and Valerie gained insight from a video and other information about Temple Grandin, the famous veterinary scientist who has autism, and they found respite and friendship with Jim Sinclair and his Autreats in the Finger Lakes region of New York. Valerie doesn't offer a typical autism story, for, as a sophisticated translator and teacher, she is highly literate, comfortable quoting from Wittgenstein and Nietzsche, and well able to avoid the personal and emotional excesses often seen in similar, less intelligent and less thoughtful testimonies.

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