Rating: 
Summary: great
Review: a great book. one of the best that shws and accepting atttude by a parent. i love this so much.
Rating:
Summary: Powerful Family Story
Review: Elijah's Cup is a powerful narrative of the trials and tribulations of caring for a special needs children, and the difficult path to recognition of those need. It is a story of a struggle for care in a community unable to recognize the proper diagnosis. It is a story of a family struggle, the tensions between husband and wife, and the questioning of a mother. This book is therapy. This book is a tale for similarly situatoned parents struggling to care for marvelous little children.
Rating:
Summary: Powerful Family Story
Review: Elijah's Cup is a powerful narrative of the trials and tribulations of caring for a special needs children, and the difficult path to recognition of those need. It is a story of a struggle for care in a community unable to recognize the proper diagnosis. It is a story of a family struggle, the tensions between husband and wife, and the questioning of a mother. This book is therapy. This book is a tale for similarly situatoned parents struggling to care for marvelous little children.
Rating:
Summary: Wow
Review: I hardly know where to begin. This book was a rare find. I have read many books about autism. Personally, I had given up parental accounts in favor of first hand accounts. But, when a few of my friends suggested this book, I read it. Wow. From the start, Valarie Paradiz found what it took me years to discover-- the importance of seeking out and listening-- REALLY listening to spectrum adults. Her instincts are awesome. Her perspective is unique. Her writing style is, as another reviewer put it, "lyrical." Bravo, Ms. Paradiz!
Rating:
Summary: Highly Recommended
Review: I have been reading many books on autism lately and I wanted one from a Mother's perspective. This one is so moving in parts you burst into tears, yet they also have incredible adventures and stories that make you smile. Elijah sounds like a wonderful little boy and reading how he progressed over the years was very touching and informative. I learned much more from this book than many books I have read. When you are a parent of a child facing a disability it is so helpful to get another parents story that has been there. The mother has such patience and love despite many hardships and much pain. Thank you for giving us a glimpse into your world and the world of your son.
Rating:
Summary: A mother's story
Review: I have been reading many books on autism lately and I wanted one from a Mother's perspective. This one is so moving in parts you burst into tears, yet they also have incredible adventures and stories that make you smile. Elijah sounds like a wonderful little boy and reading how he progressed over the years was very touching and informative. I learned much more from this book than many books I have read. When you are a parent of a child facing a disability it is so helpful to get another parents story that has been there. The mother has such patience and love despite many hardships and much pain. Thank you for giving us a glimpse into your world and the world of your son.
Rating:
Summary: A Must Read
Review: I highly recommend this book. It's enlightening and thought-provoking.
Rating:
Summary: The right to be different...
Review: The parents of Elijah are coming to realize that their son has some peculiar problems. The father's attitude is (typically) totally different from the mother's. Finally the father seems to feel that this is a very hard thing to cope with, like a problem that he would like to get over with, but can't... His male expertise as the official trouble-shooter just seems to fall short... here's a situation he can't handle, is not wired to deal with, and he gets confused, if not depressed... As is often the case (but not always, as it sometimes happens that fathers end up being -at times- better mothers to their children than their spouse), the mother proves to be organically more related to her offspring than her husband, and after the first few pages of narration, it is mainly the mother that is left with the taking care of their son, and finally resumes the raising up of Elijah. So this is a really great story, such a one that only a mother could write, about the discovery of her son's peculiarity, and how she learns how to deal with it. The sensitive narration also let's you discover the beauty of difference. Hasn't difference always been labelled as a-normal, anti-standard, hard-to-manage, anti-social, dis-eased, a social mis-fit? Here you will discover the beauty and attraction of difference. But, besides, if you may be lead to believe that the Asperger syndrome (in whatever texture or range it may manifest itself) is just another shamefull mental disease (to be -socially- ashamed of), consider a sentence written in 1979 by the Austrian discoverer of the disease, Hans Asperger: "It seems that for success in science or art, a dash of autism is essential. For success, the necessary ingredient may be an ability to turn away from the everyday world, from the simply practical, an ability to re-think a subject with originality so as to create in new untrodden ways, with all abilities canalised into the one specialty." Actually, famous people, such as Andy Warhol (with his intense propensity to think in pictures and his ability to brilliantly refashion-reorder seemingly common elements) and such as Albert Einstein (with his almost asocial tendancy to intensely focus on specific problems and issues, an extreme sensory sensibility, and an ability to visualize concepts and theories in motion pictures and images) would probably be today diagnosed as possessing a form of high-functioning (i.e. apparently "normal") autistic or Asperger syndrome. In the end, I belive that the reading of this book is recommendable to just about any audience, from mild AS suffering people up to the average neuro-typical freak, as most neuro-typical people seldom seem to realize the intense psychological pain and suffering that can be associated with the acute awareness of realizing being different, of just not fitting into the picture... The best thing for AS suffering people to do is to honestly and shamelessly face their condition, accept it, and deal with it the best way they can. In that respect, this book is very encouraging and inspiring. In the end, what both parents seem to agree upon, is that the presence of their son has both enriched and re-humanized their lives. AS-suffering children, like any children, seem to be a gift, maybe not to the whole wide world (as would be the case for neuro-typical children), but more especially to the few people they end up having close personal relationships with. Although most autistic people and AS afflicted folks often end being an intense source of irritation to their social peers and their families, their frequent meltdowns due to sensory overload, their lack of facial expressiveness and their general social aloofness may be a subtle hint that maybe not everything lies in the brutal "here and now" of a braod common neuro-typical consensus (reminds me of a PG song, More Than This), or, maybe, more extremely, as put in the words of another Amazon reviewer "autistics may be a positive neuro-variation, possibly an evolutionary step forward from the mob mentalities that are and have been crushing this planet." Mhhh... ever heard of lemmings, or of the subtle and pernicious exercise of social coercion and its various effects on individuality? Far from being an advocacy for excentricity, this is nevertheless an advocacy for a more humane view of people that are being born "wired" differently. Vive la difference! In any case, if autists and AS-suffering people have sometimes enriched our world to very great extents, whether it be in the sciences (the real cyclical structure of the chemical benzene ring was allegedly glanced at in a dream by its discoverer) or whether it be in the arts (probably just too many examples to be cited in a single review), they have always forced us to re-humanize our world-view, and to sometimes reconsider the probity of our accepted ways of social interactions. And, finally, yes, most AS-suffering people, if given the chance, can definitively be in a position to contribute actively to society and to general social welfare, in fact, just as anybody else. So be it. Amen.
Rating:
Summary: A refreshingly different perspective from a parent
Review: This is a terrific story that chronicles the first 10 years of an autistic boy's life. The story starts like most accounts written by parents -- the nagging worries, the lack of language, the diagnosis, the struggle to teach the child. But then something different...
Through a care-taker, the mother is shown that her son's differences are just part of what make him who he is. Instead of trying to illustrate treatments (like most ASD books written by parents), Elijah's mother just describes her journey through life, her search for knowledge & understanding of Asperger's and autism ...so that she can get to know her son better. Simply put, this is a book of love & acceptance.
Rating: 
Summary: illuminating journey
Review: This is a wonderful book of one mother's struggle to deal with a child with Asperger Syndrome, and the strain it can place on day-to-day life. There are also some fascinating anecdotes which reveal that some famous individuals may have had Asperger's-- Einstein, Wittgenstein, Andy Warhol, Andy Kaufman. The book does have some minor faults, though: the writing is a bit confused in a few spots, forcing me to read carefully to try to figure out what exactly was going on, and she introduces terms without fully explaining them ("perseverating", for example). The book, as wonderful as it is, it not as complete a guide for those looking for answers as I would have hoped. For that, I recommend the excellent HITCHHIKING THROUGH ASPERGER SYNDROME by Lisa Pyles.
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