Fighting Autism

by Steve Walsh

Description Parents of children with special needs deserve their own time and space to rest, heal, and refuel their energy. Fighting Autism provides that time and space. Steve Walsh, a black belt, martial arts instructor, and parent of two children on the autism spectrum brings Zen philosophy and parenting together to help caregivers take care of themselves. Fighting Autism provides readers with psychological and philosophical strategies that center around mindset change and acceptance. Parables and poetry guide readers through difficult and painful subjects and contain lessons that can apply to any parent of any child. Personal stories of a decade of raising two children with special needs establish common ground and illustrate Walsh's transformational approaches to dealing with parental stress. Parents of children with autism or Asperger syndrome are a group we must not ignore. We have seen a rise in the diagnosis of autism, especially in boys. Whether you believe in the theory of an epidemic or an epidemic of misdiagnosis, either way, at the end of the day, there are parents struggling to keep their families, homes, jobs, and dreams intact as they care for children who have a different way of interacting with the world. Steve Walsh employs love and empathy, meditation and centering, exercise and healing. All the while, readers know he has tremendous love, respect, and admiration for his own children as well as all children and adults with autism. His examples are always conscious of the effort special needs children put into getting through their day, appreciative of their individual habits and idiosyncrasies, and respectful of their right to not change, to not seek a cure for how they are. As readers come back, again and again, to the tactics and strategies in the book, they will find new utility in every chapter. The guidance to achieve mindset change; the tactics of changing focus, declining to compare, and opening our minds to the way children engage with the world; the invitation to be an instructor at all times by modeling strength, practicing patience, and teaching joy; and the rejection of parental guilt by understanding that we walk a path that no one else has walked-travel where no one else has been-in our own relationship with our unique child...all come together in a powerful approach to the art of parenting children with autism. Parents do not need to be martial artists to fall in love with this book. Martial artists do not need to be parents of children with special needs to appreciate its lessons. Fighting Autism has the power to change the way society approaches and perceives people with autism and the parents who love them.