Resources

ADHD Is Awesome

by Penn and Kim Holderness

You live in a world that wasn't designed for you. A world where you're expected to sit still, stay quiet, and focus. Because of the way your brain is wired, you can feel like you’re failing at life. But you are not failing. You are awesome.

Award-winning content creators Kim and Penn Holderness are on a mission to reboot how we think about the unfortunately named "attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder." As always, they are doing it by looking in the mirror, because they don't just study ADHD; they live it.

NueroTribes The Legacy of Austim and the Future of Neurodiversity

by Steve Silberman

What is autism? A lifelong disability, or a naturally occurring form of cognitive difference akin to certain forms of genius? In truth, it is all of these things and more—and the future of our society depends on our understanding it. Wired reporter Steve Silberman unearths the secret history of autism, long suppressed by the same clinicians who became famous for discovering it, and finds surprising answers to the crucial question of why the number of diagnoses has soared in recent years. Going back to the earliest days of autism research, Silberman offers a gripping narrative of Leo Kanner and Hans Asperger, the research pioneers who defined the scope of autism in profoundly different ways; he then goes on to explore the game-changing concept of neurodiversity. NeuroTribes considers the idea that neurological differences such as autism, dyslexia, and ADHD are not errors of nature or products of the toxic modern world, but the result of natural variations in the human genome. This groundbreaking bookwill reshape our understanding of the history, meaning, function, and implications of neurodiversity in our world.

Uniquely Human A Different Way of Seeing Autism

by Barry M. Prizant and Tom Fields-Meyer

Uniquely Human is a groundbreaking book on autism, by one of the world’s leading experts, who portrays autism not as a tragic disability, but as a unique way of being human.

Autism is usually portrayed as a checklist of deficits, including difficulties interacting socially, problems in communicating, sensory challenges, and repetitive behavior patterns. This perspective leads to therapies focused on ridding individuals of “autistic” symptoms. Now Dr. Barry M. Prizant, an internationally renowned autism expert, offers a new and compelling paradigm: the most successful approaches to autism don’t aim at fixing a person by eliminating symptoms, but rather seeking to understand the individual’s experience and what underlies the behavior.

Being Adopted: The Lifelong Search for Self

by David M. Brodzinsky (Author), Marshall D. Schecter (Author), Robin Marantz Henig (Author)

This groundbreaking book uses the poignant, powerful voices of adoptees and adoptive parents to explore the experience of adoption and its lifelong effects. A major work, filled with astute analysis and moving truths.