A couple of reviews and a breakthrough

I just finished reading the book Tilt by Elizabeth Burns. What an emotionally powerful read. It is by a local author and I've been told is almost entirely autobiographical. It is about a mother's struggle to hold her family together. Her daughter is severly autistic, her husband is bipolar and life is almost too much for her to bare. I got completely sucked into the book, because so much of her emotion, thoughts and feelings rang true for me. She wrote about things that I'm almost embarrassed to even admit to myself that I think about. In a sad way, this book also gives me a comforting feeling that it could be so much worse. While my husband and I struggle daily with our anxieties about what our family life will entail and what Lowell's future may hold, this book brings up some of the issues we face and talking points to ponder.

Also, the cover story of Time magazine this week (May 15th issue) is on the autistic mind. Very facinating read! Some of the articles are partially available online.

Lowell Update: He is starting to repeat words a more. For a long time we would try to verbally prompt him to say a word and got no response. Then we became obsessed with letters. After mastering the alphabet we started putting letters together. After taking the Doodle Pro that we bought Chloe for her birthday and writing out words we figured out that the way to increase his vocabulary is to show him an object, spell it out, write down the word, he will trace the letters of the word, then underline it and say the word. He has learned dozens of new words in the last few weeks using this technique. He seems to really get it!