A Different Childhood: Autism from the Inside: The Story of an Amazing Childhood

What's wrong with Iris? She is difficult to make contact with, she talks gibberish. She refuses food, she wets herself, screams for almost everything, bites small children, and never does what she is told. And why can she in short rare moments solve problems, which not even grown-ups manage? How can she learn so many complicated words that she's heard only once? Why was she already as a small child a full-fledged liar and con artist?

PURPOSE OF THE BOOK: A different childhood is a fascinating autobiographical depiction of what it's like to grow up with autism. A true story about the transformative power of love and a unique document from the inside about an autistic child's life and struggle create for herself a place in the world.

The purpose of the book is to serve as a kind of dictionary of autism for parents and educators.

Today we know that autism is something other than either psychosis or development disturbance, and that the level of intelligence can be very high. We know that autism involves reduced communications and social capacity. We know that people with autism may experience visual, aural and emotional inputs in a different and often painful way.

But how do autistic persons themselves perceive their surroundings. Why do they react the way they do? What do they see? What do they comprehend? What causes their behaviors? How do they experience them? “A different childhood” describes the inner world of one high-functioning autistic, in a way that gives parents and educators an insight that can be helpful in decoding the needs and issues that give rise autistic stereotypy and stimming. It can serve almost as a dictionary for those who have autistics in their care, a lexicon that can help them interpret the often wordless expressions they are puzzled or frustrated by. Chapter nine explicitly addresses this need in the form answers to the most frequently asked questions about autism.