Personal Reflections on Parenting Children with Special Needs

Alex Stimpson's birth, three months premature, starts a 13-month ordeal of poking, prodding, thumping, testing, confinement, and medical torture -- and that's just for his parents, whose first-baby fantasies are trampled under a stampede of doctors, nurses, administrators, and insurance drones who treat them in ways ranging from polite disinterest to contempt. How Alex finally makes it home, and how he and his family are changed by the experience, is the subject of this tough, touching memoir.

Author James S. Hirsch can reflect both on what it's like to parent a child with diabetes and what it's like to be an adult with diabetes, and he's not happy with the way the medical profession and the diabetes industry treats either one. Writing from his dual perspectives, Hirsch challenges the authorities to stop blaming diabetics for their disease and start working on a real cure.

Like most memoirs about raising adopted children with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, this one is full of tragic and scary choices that will make you want to hold your child a little tighter. The fact that Bonnie Buxton's daughter survives to the end of the book and seems headed for a better future makes it a relatively upbeat entry in the genre.

Parents of children with a wide range of disabilities have contributed essays -- some heartwarming, some heartbreaking -- to this thoughtful collection that portrays the highs and lows of special-needs parenting.

His daughter's diagnosis sends author Dan Kennedy on a journey to learn what it means to be a dwarf, visiting a past when Little People were freaks or the subjects of experiments, a present where organizations like Little People of America bring them together, and a future in which science may eliminate them entirely. In its examination of the ways in which it is now becoming possible to "cure" dwarfism with limb-lengthening procedures or eliminate it altogether through genetic testing, this is a book that will be of interest to parents of all children with special needs, not just dwarfism.

Author Paul Collins is the father of a child with autism, but this isn't a standard diagnosis-struggle-triumph memoir. Interspersed with scenes of his son, Morgan, is the author's research on autistic figures from the past, especially an 18th-century "wild boy." It's a fascinating mix of relatability and research.

Subtitled "What Adults With Disabilities Wish All Parents Knew," this essay collection turns the tables and provides thoughts about parenting from the people being parented. Among them are actress Marlee Matlin, who contributed the foreword.

Two sisters who are the mothers of daughters with special needs -- one with Asperger syndrome, the other with Bipolar Disorder -- speak up for all of us who can't put "My Kid Is an Honor Student" bumper stickers on our cars, but know that's meaningless anyway. Through rambling anecdotes and silly sayings, they celebrate the joys and triumphs and really goofy moments of special-needs parenting.

To raise a family of 11 kids, many with significant special-needs, Ann Yurcek's had to learn how to stretch a dollar and get maximum value out of every acquisition. That same multitasking applies to her book, which offers at least four fascinating tales for the price of one, foremost among them that of Becca, the "tiny titan" of the title, born with Noonan syndrome and holding tenaciously to life despite dire predictions and medical mismanagement.

Subtitled "A Suicidal Teen, a Desperate Mother, and a Chronicle of Recovery," this is not a feel-good book about overcoming tragedy; it's more of a feel-uneasy book about managed care, psychiatric uncertainty, and the mysterious workings of the teenage mind.