Raising Superman!

Introduction

I want to ensure that everyone who picks up this book knows exactly what this book is about, and what it’s not about. Raising Superman! is my attempt to share the lessons, blessings, and struggles that my family has experienced over the last sixteen years while raising our severely disabled, mentally retarded, and heavily autistic son.

It is not a book about positive thinking, hopeful outcomes, or magic wish-lists. It is a short, concise guide sharing many of the most important things we’ve either learned or realized as we worked through our struggles against autism, sometimes falling upon these items by accident. This guide borrows a lot of material from some very smart people, as none of us are intelligent or lucky enough to come up with all of life’s answers by ourselves.

This book is intended to be a very useful, step-by-step, easy-to-read handbook for anyone who is raising a disabled child, those folks who have someone close to them doing the same, or anyone else wanting to learn more about what the families of severely disabled children are faced with.

It is not intended to provide medical advice, nor does it contain medical facts. In fact, most of this material is highly subjective and offers just an opinion. Over the years, we’ve found that most of what we’ve experienced as a family in raising our child has nothing to do with medical treatments. Remember, disabled children with cognitive and sensory impairments need very different kinds of love, attention, and care. So it’s not surprising that successfully raising these children requires a different type of approach, if the family is to survive and flourish.

I originally was going to call this book But What about the Rest of Us? to focus on the fact that many people really struggle for a long time to find the right way to care for their severely disabled child. Although some disabled, autistic, or mentally retarded children have miraculous recoveries, the reality is that more often than not, most children with serious disabilities do not recover overnight. Families struggle for years trying to find the right mix of emotions, decisions, technologies, and supports to help safely raise and care for their child.

The material in this book is not sugar-coated. My only promise is that what you read in this book is the straight deal, as we lived it. Even when improvements are seen in a disabled child, it often takes years of focused, dedicated effort. So I wanted to share our lessons learned that deal with the issue of tackling life head on, as it falls out of the sky—in its raw form.

So what about the rest of us? The “rest of us” refers to those of us who want to do the very best for our disabled children but are faced with a very difficult set of circumstances, problems, and emotions when things don’t magically get better overnight. This book is about keeping your sanity in a very insane situation, when even doctors, medicines, prayers, and tears don’t help.

Successfully raising any child is difficult, at best. However, successfully raising a severely autistic child can be emotionally, spiritually, and financially draining. For those who attempt to do this as a single parent, this guide will hopefully provide you with a shortcut to some items that should help. For those who struggle to do this as a partnership in marriage, this material should help you keep your marriage together and allow you to focus on what’s really important. Finally, for those who read it and do not agree with the material, that’s fine too. Having an opinion, even a contrary one, is vital to the success of raising a disabled child.

The statements you’re about to read are my opinion as to what worked for us. Your personal experience will most likely be different. However, one thing is certain: raising a child with a disability takes time, focus, and energy. I’m writing this first book to provide some immediate shortcuts, tricks, and “cheat sheets” as to what worked best for our family. This is triage for one of life’s major tragedies, developed to help others find their way on the roller coaster of life while immersed in the fog of autism.