The Accidental Teacher: Life Lessons from My Silent Son

179 Pages·2009·5.75 MB·English

by  Annie Lubliner Lehmann

The Accidental Teacher

The Accidental Teacher
Life Lessons from My Silent Son
An Autism Memoir
Annie Lubliner Lehmann
Foreword by
Catherine Lord
The University of Michigan Press I Ann Arbor
Copyright © by Annie Lubliner Lehmann 2009
All rights reserved
Published in the United States of America by
The University of Michigan Press
Manufactured in the United States of America
@ Printed on acid-free paper
2012 2011 2010 2009 432 1
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without the written
permission of the publisher.
A elP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.
U.S. CIP data applied for.
ISBN-13: 978-0-472-07074-9 (cloth: alk. paper)
ISBN-I0: 0-472-07074-6 (cloth: all<. paper)
ISBN-13: 978-0-472-05074-1 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN-I0: 0-472-05074-5 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Royalties from the sale of this book are being donated to autism research.
ISBN-13: 978-0-472-02324-0 (electronic)
((We understand bac/(ward but live forward"
S0REN I(IERI(EGAARD

Foreword
CATHERINE LORD
W hile I do not know Jonah and have never met
Annie Lubliner Lehmann, I would like to. I was
sent a copy of The Accidental Teacher: Life Lessons from
My Silent Son as a courtesy because I am the director
of the Autism and Communication Disorders Center at
the University of Michigan near where they live. I was so
impressed that I wrote to Ms. Lehmann, expressing my
admiration for the book. I was particularly interested in
using it in a class that I was teaching where I wanted to
blend primary research materials with personal accounts
from individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD)
and family members, as well as reports about ASD in the
media.
This is a beautifully written, clearly articulated story
of a child, now a young man, with autism, and his fam-
viii I
ily. In readable prose, it tells a complex story of a mother
and son and a family in unique circumstances. Luckily for
readers, the mother is a talented writer who has chosen to
share her insights and observations with us.
Many observations in the book will be familiar to
parents and professionals who work with individuals with
ASD: the need to consider (though not necessarily try)
any possible treatment, even those that seem far fetched;
the daily concerns with sleeping and eating and disruptive
behaviors; the difficult trade-offs in building a life for an
entire family and responding to the extraordinary needs
of a child with a disability. Yet, in the end, this is a unique
story about a boy who loved long, quiet walks; rolling on
frozen ground; and banging cobs of corn; a boy who en
thusiastically perused books with photographs and had a
Houdini-like ability to disappear. Jonah and his family not
only adapted to his autism but in his teen years were faced
with an unexpected series of events. It is a tale told hon
estly, without sentimentality, about the life and challenges
of one young man who becomes the accidental teacher of
the people he knows directly and now, through his moth
er's fine book, of us, the readers.
Table of Contents
Acl<nowledgments ............................................................... xiii
' "
I n t ro d uc tIon ......................................................................... XVII
Chapter 1 Missed Milestones ............................................ 1
Chapter 2 The uAlphabet Soup" of Special Needs ....... 13
Chapter 3 uCelebrating Jonah" ........................................ 25
Chapter 4 Jonah's UAngels" ............................................... 35
Chapter 5 A Bargain with G-d ........................................ 49
Chapter 6 School Days ...................................................... 61
Chapter 7 uStop Banging the Corn" - Learning a
New Vernacular ............................................. 73
Chapter 8 No Quick Fix ................................................... 85
Chapter 9 Mother or Martyr? ......................................... 97
Chapter 10 Bittersweet ..................................................... 107
Chapter 11 Letting Go ...................................................... 119
Chapter 12 uCows in Canada" ......................................... 129
Chapter 13 Jonah Now ...................................................... 139
Chapter 14 Every Child is Born to Matter .................... 149