Talking to Kamran Nazeer
Today we met Kamran Nazeer, author of Send In the Idiots: Stories from the other side of autism. He told me about touring all over the US (including a stop at the favorite bookstore of my childhood, Cody’s Books in Berkeley). I asked him if parents came up to him and said, “So, what should I do to make my child do as well as you have?” (I asked this not with a view to taking any advice proferred, but because it seems to me something that parents cannot help but ask.)
Nazeer said that parents have indeed asked him this, and that he has responded by saying that it is a parent who knows their child best, and knows what to do. (The best answer, I think; write an autism book, and you face the perils of becoming an autism “professional.”) A little later in the conversation, Nazeer noted that his parents’ honesty about where he was as a child—about what he could and could not do—helped the most.
Honesty is the best policy when it comes to trying to figure out what to do for one’s child with autism. It can be surprisingly difficult for a parent to see and to say exactly where and what and who is the child in front of them, to provide an accurate witness of their child. Send In the Idiots: Stories from the other side of autism does not provide all the answers but it certainly can get a good conversation going.
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POSTED IN: Adulthood, Autism Lit, Books, Parenting, Treatment
1 opinion for Talking to Kamran Nazeer
Mona
Jun 6, 2007 at 4:39 pm
It was a great book. not obscure and well organized. can’t wait to read his next book.
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