Strange Son: Two Mothers, Two Sons, and the Quest to Unlock the Hidden World of Autism

Portia Iversen
Riverhead Books (2006)
ISBN 1573223115
Reviewed by Linda Benninghoff for Reader Views (3/07)

"Strange Son" -- this wonderful and unique memoir by a mother of an autistic child, will provide startling insights for all parents of autistic children, and will be of interest to anyone interested in miracles.

Dov, the son of author Portia Iversen, is a low-functioning, non--verbal autistic child. Instead of giving up on Dov, Iversen starts Cure Autism Now (CAN). She hears of Tito, a teenage boy living in India who writes poetry, who is also non-verbal and autistic. Using funds from CAN, Portia brings Tito and his mother Soma to the U.S., and the three are plunged into the world of scientific research. Almost more than half the book deals with scientists attempts to understand Tito.

Tito is unusual for an autistic child: "one in a million," Iversen considers. Most low-functioning autistic children cannot communicate and have often been labeled retarded by experts. Iversen has worried that her son Dov may be retarded, yet she stubbornly refuses to believe this, and continues to press for answers.

As Iversen becomes acquainted with Tito, she is introduced to the world of genius and the world of autism at the same time. Tito is able not only to write moving poetry, but also explains, from the inside, with great depth of insight, about what it is like to be autistic.

Tito says he cannot hear and see at the same time. He has no sense that his body exists. "Stimming," when the autistic child flaps his hands, gives Tito a sense of his body. Tito’s auditory sense dominates. Yet many of the educational programs currently designed for autistic children stress the visual, and theories say that in autistic children the visual sense dominates. Tito contradicts this--at least in his own case--in his own words. Tito is non-verbal, but he communicates by using an alphabet board and by writing.

As the book progresses, I learned that Tito could turn upside-down many of the current assumptions about autism. The end of the book provides hope not only for Tito and Iversen’s son Dov, but for what may be thousands or more autistic children who seem retarded but are not. Soon Soma is using her teaching method with other autistic children--with Dov and the children at Dov’s school, and her outreach is growing.

While there were times when I was reading “Strange Son” when I felt hopeless because the scientists did not seem to understand Tito, I kept reading and hope began to break through. The book should be highly successful in helping autistic children, and at the same time portrays the despair and frustration that parents of autistic children go through.

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