Writing Autism: The Potential Within

Richard Solomon, MD

A doctor’s visit is like a small mystery novel. There is always a story to be told and a problem to be solved. For 25 years, I’ve diagnosed and treated children on the autism spectrum. I have been witness to the emotional journey that families take to help their children on the autism spectrum. The journey begins with an unwanted diagnosis and then leads down that road I call “the potential within”—what every parent wishes for their child’s future.  My book, Autism: The Potential Within, is about a little boy named Jacob Grant whose family comes to my office because Jacob, at 2 ½ years old, is not talking yet. Jacob, his parents, and his younger brother are a composite family I created to tell the story of that emotional journey.

The book follows Jacob from the time of his diagnosis until he goes to kindergarten. It is written as a series of office visits and is primarily conversations between me and the family. At key moments in the “office visits,” I make comments on what is happening in the office. I might talk about the parents’ psychological dilemmas, or about autism science, or about my own feelings. 

Each chapter presents a piece of the story, describing my “detective work” to help the family answer their pressing questions. I hoped to make each chapter a page-turner to find out what happens next to Jacob and his family. And I hoped to create a “family in the round,” to make the Grant family as real as possible. I also wanted the book to be for the professionals who care for families, so it is also about what I have learned about helping families as they move down the path.  

The book comes in three sections:

• In part 1, I make the diagnosis and help the Grants learn about the landscape of different options that would help Jacob.
• In part 2, Jacob’s parents choose to do a combination of special education services, speech/language and occupational therapies, and a parent-implemented model called The PLAY Project. The book’s subtitle is: The PLAY Project Approach to Helping Young Children with Autism. I am the medical director and founder of The PLAY Project and it is this second section that makes the book truly unique. I present a play-based, developmental approach to autism. The PLAY Project promotes playful interactions between the parents and their child in a way that helps the child with autism improve his or her social functioning and gives parents the joy of being their child’s best play partner.
• It turns out that as Jacob’s autism improves his behavior get worse! So in part 3 of the book, called The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, I try to convince Jacob’s parents that misbehavior is a good thing and can and should be used to help Jacob become a more mature emotional thinker. 

While I hope that the book hangs together to create a whole experience, the book can be read by section and there are certain chapters that I hand out to parents and professionals all the time. For instance, Jacob’s mom calls me (in Chapter 4) to say that she’s considering going to a lecture by a well known, popular speaker who is promoting special diets as a treatment for autism. I advise her on what to do. I have a chapter called ‘The Language Mountain’ because all parents want their children to talk sooner rather than later. I have a couple of chapters on how to help the Grants advocate for Jacob in order to get the best school placement for him. The chapter that begins section 2 describes the PLAY Project approach. And I have two popular chapters on behavior. One is called ‘Transition Tricks’ or how to help children with autism transition from one activity to another (“Turn off your iPad now, Jacob. It’s time to eat!”)—always a problem for kids on the spectrum; and the chapter called “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly,” which is a description of my approach to behavioral issues. 

As I end these reflections on writing the book, I must emphasize that I was trained as an academic physician and spent the first 25 years of my career as a pediatrician in university settings. While the book is a reflection of my clinical approach, it is also rooted in the best science and research. This research includes the rigorous, independent evaluation that was done by Michigan State University on The PLAY Project’s autism intervention for young children. The research, published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics, showed that parents can indeed learn to be their child’s best play partner and that children with autism, as a result, have the potential within to markedly improve in their development.