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(More customer reviews)Eustacia Cutler's book about raising Temple Grandin answers the two questions I've always had whenever I've heard or read about Temple Grandin. How did Temple survive in a time when everyone was warehousing their kids with autism in mental institutions and how did she succeed so well as an adult?
This is not a "how-to" book on educational procedures or anything like that. By reading this autobiography, you will understand the character of Temple's mother, who quite literally saved Temple's life. Fifty-some years ago, Eustacia was the product of her time in most ways--the stay-at-home wife to a wealthy man who was bent upon institutionalizing Temple, particularly when he got the support from psychiatrists who believed at the time that the reason for Temple's autism was Eustacia herself.
There's a real lesson to learn here. Instead of surrendering her child, the originally compliant Eustacia (women were supposed to be that in the 40s and 50s) changed. She intuitively knew that if she gave up whom she could be, her child would be given up as well. She fought ferociously and even walked away from her marriage and her economic well being to save her child. And at that time, when she faced a family who didn't support the divorce financially and a society that looked down on single mothers, she had four children!
If there's one thing that stands out in this book, it's that you have to be who you are and all you can be in order to give that same gift to your child. Temple Grandin comes by her strength, intelligence, and creativity because she had a mother who studied every angle of whatever or whoever she could find to help her child and wasn't afraid to try anything, from allowing her child to negotiate with a local merchant to fighting for her child's right to the education Eustacia believed would save her.
The reader gets a clear picture of the evolution of the science of autism over the decades with some pretty deep conclusions on Temple's mother's part. It's personal. It's incredibly written. This is NOT a how-to-raise-your-child book. It's a story about the meaning of life and society itself. I'd recommend to anyone who wants to know how character is formed-it's not just parents of children with autism. It's one of the best books I've read in a long, long time and I'm eighty years old with a library of books I've read over a lifetime!
Click Here to see more reviews about: Thorn in My Pocket: Temple Grandin's Mother Tells the Family Story
A Thorn in My Pocket is Eustacia Cutler's story of raising her daughter, Temple Grandin, in the conservative Leave-it-to-Beaver world of the fifties, a time when children with autism were routinely diagnosed as "infant schizophrenics" and banished to institutions. She tells of her fight to keep Temple in the mainstream of family, community, and school life, how Temple responded and went on to succeed, as Ms. Cutler puts it, "beyond my wildest dreams." Ms. Cutler also explores the nature of the autism disorder as doctors understand it today, and how its predominant characteristics reflect our own traits in an exaggerated form.
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