Rating: 
Summary: Excellent resource!
Review: A great book for anyone associated with family's who live with Asperger Syndrome. Practical ideas are interwoven among interesting stories told from a first person perspective. This author knows how to hold the reader's attention and how to teach without preaching. I highly recommend this book. J.P.
Rating:
Summary: Now I'm beginning to understand
Review: I am the "significant other" of a newly diagnosed Aspie. Last week I ended our one year plus relationship because I just couldn't face another day of trying to solve the NT/Aspie puzzle. I was trapped in a vicious cycle of confussion, frustration, anger, resentment and guilt. I searched the Internet endlessly for an answer...what is Asperger's Syndrome? The clinical definitions and observations were useless. I wanted to know why the man I loved chose to repeat previous conversations verbatim, mimic the gestures and actions of others and stand uncomfortably close to complete strangers. This book gave me the answers and it gave me hope. It has become my "owner's guide" or my "operating manual" if you will. Thanks to Liane Holliday Wiley I have found renewed strength to fight for the man I love.
Rating:
Summary: Thank You Liane Holliday Willey
Review: I am the "significant other" of a newly diagnosed Aspie. Last week I ended our one year plus relationship because I just couldn't face another day of trying to solve the NT/Aspie puzzle. I was trapped in a vicious cycle of confussion, frustration, anger, resentment and guilt. I searched the Internet endlessly for an answer...what is Asperger's Syndrome? The clinical definitions and observations were useless. I wanted to know why the man I loved chose to repeat previous conversations verbatim, mimic the gestures and actions of others and stand uncomfortably close to complete strangers. This book gave me the answers and it gave me hope. It has become my "owner's guide" or my "operating manual" if you will. Thanks to Liane Holliday Wiley I have found renewed strength to fight for the man I love.
Rating:
Summary: What to do once you know who you are
Review: I recommend this book even if you haven't read Liane Holliday Willey's previous book "Pretending to be Normal". It gives practical suggestions on how to deal with your daily life if you or a family member has Asperger Syndrome. I have used several of the suggestions myself. I believe there is a huge gap in the Asperger community that is starting to correct itself. That is, once you are diagnosed then...what do you do? After the initial relief of having a NAME for your disorder, what's next? I think that this book is another step toward self awareness. I highly recommend adding it to your Asperger library.
Rating:
Summary: What to do once you know who you are
Review: I recommend this book even if you haven't read Liane Holliday Willey's previous book "Pretending to be Normal". It gives practical suggestions on how to deal with your daily life if you or a family member has Asperger Syndrome. I have used several of the suggestions myself. I believe there is a huge gap in the Asperger community that is starting to correct itself. That is, once you are diagnosed then...what do you do? After the initial relief of having a NAME for your disorder, what's next? I think that this book is another step toward self awareness. I highly recommend adding it to your Asperger library.
Rating: 
Summary: great follow up
Review: i think the above tilte says it all. god for aspies and those who deal with them.
Rating:
Summary: Now I'm beginning to understand
Review: It wasn't until I read this book that I finally understood some of what my Asperger's son is going through. Although I have read many clinically oriented books, and I cognitively understood what was going on, it was this book that helped me to emotionally understand him. This book led me to level with his siblings about his problem and add them to his support team rather than leaving them in the wake of his embarassing behavior and telling them to leave him alone. This book spoke very powerfully about needing and giving comfort to those who are scared -- and all of us are scared of something sometime. The author spoke convincingly of comfort packs that a person can take with them if they anticipate stress and need to be calmed. After reading that, I looked quite differently at my teenagers' Walkmans and my Asperger's son's unusual choice of modern equivalents to his old security blanket. This book had a very positive effect on how my family has responded to all of our children, but especially my son with Asperger's. The fact that this book was written by someone with Asperger's has another impact: hope for a supportive and fullfilling adult life for my son. I would recommend this book to someone who is somewhat familier with the disorder. It wouldn't be the first book to read, but maybe the second or third.
Rating:
Summary: A treasure trove of practical advice!
Review: Liane Holliday Willey has compiled a treasure trove of practical advice for families and individuals affected by Asperger's Syndrome.
Rating: 
Summary: Practical advice, but lots of metaphors and ambiguity
Review: This book contains a lot of practical advice on creating an autistic-friendly environment for yourself or a family member who is autistic. It encompasses everything from social skills to the arrangement of the home, and offers real-life suggestions for all of these things. I am planning on using some of these suggestions in order to make my own home more livable given my sensory issues. The ideas about building a place to hide were particularly useful, as I have not had the ability to hide since my health deteriorated and my body lost the flexibility and resilience of childhood (I used to hide in closets and clothes hampers, but that would be a painful exercise in futility now). I plan to build an adult-friendly hiding place at the earliest opportunity, because I agree with the author that such places can be an essential part of dealing with overload. The book also tries to emphasize the positive aspects of being autistic, which I saw as a good thing. Unfortunately, it falls into the trap of emphasizing specific autistic traits as universal positive ones, when in fact they are not universal. To say things like "We're good because we have average to above-average IQs" implies that those autistic people who do not are not so good. These sections also mention strengths, like visual thinking, that are nowhere close to universal in any sort of autistic person. This, to me, weakened rather than strengthened the case for autistic people being good as we are, because it made our adequacy sound as if it was dependent on certain abilities. A problem I had with the book was its excessive use of complex metaphorical language. I understand that a lot of autistic people can use more of such language than we can understand, but I found it very difficult to get through this book when I had to ponder out the meaning of a metaphor every few paragraphs. It took me four readings just to finish it without getting overloaded and giving up. This was made worse by the lack of sufficient editing typical of this publisher, who left several misspellings, grammatical errors, and ambiguous sentences in the text. The author goes back and forth on the issue of pretending to be normal, and of the developmental path of autistic people. She portrays being autistic as being okay. Then she portrays getting as close as possible to non-autistic as optimal. Then she talks about the hardships she faces specifically because of her ability to pass for normal, particularly the very real one whereby people mistake her acting job for reality and cannot believe the real issues she faces daily. There is no clear resolution of this issue, but the book provides some tips on acting normal in social situations (such as finding ways of mimicking others' behavior in a slightly modified fashion in order to fit the body language of a group) that could be useful in moderation, but detrimental if compulsively adhered to. At the same time, the author laments her daughter's strong desire to be like everyone else. There are a lot of mixed messages here. While not having the same sort of autism I do -- we share some traits in common, but she has difficulties I don't, and seems completely oblivious to many of the difficulties I do have -- is not the fault of the author, it has definitely affected the readability and applicability of this book to my life. We are so different that, while I can clearly see the essential autisticness of her writing, it is nearly as alien to me as non-autistic people's writing is. Some other people I know have found this to be the case for them as well, while others find her writing unusually *easy* to read. I would suggest reading some of her other writing to find out how easy this book would be to read and apply to your life or the life of your child. I would recommend this book much more highly for people who can identify with the general patterns the author describes, than for those who can't, although it can contain some useful practical information for all of us.
Rating:
Summary: Practical advice, but lots of metaphors and ambiguity
Review: This book contains a lot of practical advice on creating an autistic-friendly environment for yourself or a family member who is autistic. It encompasses everything from social skills to the arrangement of the home, and offers real-life suggestions for all of these things. I am planning on using some of these suggestions in order to make my own home more livable given my sensory issues. The ideas about building a place to hide were particularly useful, as I have not had the ability to hide since my health deteriorated and my body lost the flexibility and resilience of childhood (I used to hide in closets and clothes hampers, but that would be a painful exercise in futility now). I plan to build an adult-friendly hiding place at the earliest opportunity, because I agree with the author that such places can be an essential part of dealing with overload. The book also tries to emphasize the positive aspects of being autistic, which I saw as a good thing. Unfortunately, it falls into the trap of emphasizing specific autistic traits as universal positive ones, when in fact they are not universal. To say things like "We're good because we have average to above-average IQs" implies that those autistic people who do not are not so good. These sections also mention strengths, like visual thinking, that are nowhere close to universal in any sort of autistic person. This, to me, weakened rather than strengthened the case for autistic people being good as we are, because it made our adequacy sound as if it was dependent on certain abilities. A problem I had with the book was its excessive use of complex metaphorical language. I understand that a lot of autistic people can use more of such language than we can understand, but I found it very difficult to get through this book when I had to ponder out the meaning of a metaphor every few paragraphs. It took me four readings just to finish it without getting overloaded and giving up. This was made worse by the lack of sufficient editing typical of this publisher, who left several misspellings, grammatical errors, and ambiguous sentences in the text. The author goes back and forth on the issue of pretending to be normal, and of the developmental path of autistic people. She portrays being autistic as being okay. Then she portrays getting as close as possible to non-autistic as optimal. Then she talks about the hardships she faces specifically because of her ability to pass for normal, particularly the very real one whereby people mistake her acting job for reality and cannot believe the real issues she faces daily. There is no clear resolution of this issue, but the book provides some tips on acting normal in social situations (such as finding ways of mimicking others' behavior in a slightly modified fashion in order to fit the body language of a group) that could be useful in moderation, but detrimental if compulsively adhered to. At the same time, the author laments her daughter's strong desire to be like everyone else. There are a lot of mixed messages here. While not having the same sort of autism I do -- we share some traits in common, but she has difficulties I don't, and seems completely oblivious to many of the difficulties I do have -- is not the fault of the author, it has definitely affected the readability and applicability of this book to my life. We are so different that, while I can clearly see the essential autisticness of her writing, it is nearly as alien to me as non-autistic people's writing is. Some other people I know have found this to be the case for them as well, while others find her writing unusually *easy* to read. I would suggest reading some of her other writing to find out how easy this book would be to read and apply to your life or the life of your child. I would recommend this book much more highly for people who can identify with the general patterns the author describes, than for those who can't, although it can contain some useful practical information for all of us.
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