Overview

Three decades ago, Barbara LaSalle bore her first son, Ben. For the first few years of Ben's life, Barbara and others were amazed by her child's early brilliance and creativity. Ben was speaking in full sentences before age one and reading competently at age two. But soon, Ben started behaving in odd ways. He insisted that the exact same breakfast be served on the same exact plate day after day. He became terrified of noises and refused to ride escalators. Ben had a super-analytical mind - he could memorize maps of big cities, storing information like a small computer - but he had no emotion. Observing this, LaSalle's joy of motherhood turned to sticky resentment and obligation. Nothing changed for decades, even when LaSalle learned that her son had a neurobiological disease similar to autism called Asperger's Syndrome, the ""little grown-up"" or ""little professor"" disease. LaSalle became self-loathing, the fact that she couldn't find it in her own heart to love her own son weighing on her heavily. Then she met Jack, a man with a brain aneurysm who often spoke gibberish but who also had much wisdom. Somehow, her friendship with Jack transformed her, allowing her to forgive herself and see that she wasn't a horrible person but simply a mother suffering from a disappointment she had refused to come to terms with. Finding Ben is a remarkable account of one mother's account of what life is like to have a child with Asberger's Syndrome. It's about the challenges of what it means to be a mother.

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9780071402255

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