A Slant of Sun One Child's Courage [Paperback]

For Beth Kepharts son, the diagnosis was pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified a broad spectrum of difficulties, including autistic features. As the author and her husband discover, all that label really means is that their son Jeremy is different in a million wonderful ways, and also different in ways that need our help. Its so hard, this parenting project. Every kid is different, every parent is different, and the boxes were permitted so confining. Every difference diagnosed; every variation a treatment problem. And in spite of it all, parents do muddle through, and children do grow, unfold, become their own true selves, as we reach towards and finally to themas Beth Kephart reaches toward Jeremy and Jeremy toward the world.Beautifully written, absorbing and moving. A highly talented mother affords us precious insight into her sons extraordinary progression from autistic features to giftedness.We may teach our children to read, but they teach us the language of the spirit. In these sterling essays, Beth Kephart listens with her soul. In clear, incandescent prose, she invites us to defy probability along with her, to learn the meaning of faith and the navigation of the everyday, to understand the labels and break through them.A triumph of writing and of the human spirit. This moving, suspenseful, brave, and daring book belongs with the classics. To read it is to experience first-hand the redemptive power of love.Ive always though different a sad euphemism when it was applied to children with problems, but Beth Kephart has undone my every preconception. Her desperate, loving journey through uncharted territory is ultimately so moving and hope-affirming (without a moment of sappy uplift) that I was overwhelmed by it. By helping her son out of his silence, putting words on these pages, Kephart redeems all of us from reading any diagnosis as certain doom.At a time when as many as one in five children face the challenge of growinl3A