The best books to read to make you cherish and enjoy your neurodivergent child

I’ve always been fascinated by the question, “What is personality?”

Is there someone we’re hardwired to be or do other factors so affect us that we’re who we are because of our experiences? What about extreme traits—are they an aspect of our personality or something more external? 

This book tackles these questions in such an interesting way, by focusing on mild forms of traits that might be diagnosable at higher levels. For example, if you’re quick to anger, is it possible you have a mild form of a rage disorder, or are you simply an angry person? 

One of the chapters is about adults with very mild traits of autism. It opens the door to our thinking more deeply about autism as an inherent part of someone’s personality, rather than something separate from them.

There’s something affirming and positive about that to me. I think any parent with a neurodivergent child finds themselves ruminating on what makes us who we are and the more we think about that, the less dismissive we are of people with differences.

(Interesting sidenote: the co-author of this book, Catherine Johnson, is also the co-author of several of Temple Grandin’s books.)

I still remember when my son’s speech therapist recommended this to me: she warned me that I would find it overwhelming because Temple had such huge challenges.

But I didn’t feel discouraged or overwhelmed at all. Grandin is so uniquely herself from beginning to end, so smart, so aware, so able to figure out both her own needs and those of the animals whose lives (and deaths) she improves, that I found the book totally uplifting, not to mention fascinating.

The fact that she singlehandedly made our slaughterhouses infinitely more humane proves the point my co-author and I are always trying to make: neurodivergent individuals will think of things no one else does and enrich any project or community they’re part of.

I know this probably feels like an obvious recommendation, since it’s on every list imaginable, but I love this novel.

The narrator is autistic and funny and brilliant and wonderful and heartbreaking, and you root for him from beginning to end. The ways in which he limits his life by having rules and then breaks them when he wants to solve his mystery show both how important routine can be for someone overwhelmed by life’s chaos, and also how much this character cares about the people in his life. 

I took all of our kids to see the play based on this, and they loved it, including my autistic son. It’s just feel-good without being at all sappy, condescending, or unrealistic.

So, in the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that I haven’t read this entire book, but I did read the original article that the book came out of and other articles by and about the Suskinds. 

Ron Suskind did exactly what Lynn Koegel and I believe all parents should do: he observed his son’s interest and used it as a bridge for communication and connection.

Disney was a huge part of our family life when our kids were little (and still plays a role in our lives today since one of my sons is a children’s television writer and another one has his own theme park video channel), so I love that it was Disney movies that brought the Suskinds together.

I read this when it first came out, many years ago, and haven’t reread it recently, but I loved it enough at the time that it inspired a YA novel of my own.

In The Rosie Project, a smart man who appears to have some autistic characteristics sets out to find a life partner. He wants to do it with logic and rules but of course love defies these things. After reading it, I decided to write a book about a teenage girl wanting to find a partner for her autistic sister and, despite her good intentions, missing some clues about what her sister really wants and needs.

The Rosie Project is a romance with characters you care about, and who doesn’t want to read more well-done romances? Especially ones with characters who don’t fall into the same old depictions.