Puzzled: 100 Pieces of Autism

Finally, a book that captures the confusing, amusing, frustrating and tender experience of loving a person with Asperger's syndrome-both before and after the diagnosis. Nilla and Steve Childs see their first-born child Daniel grow through a puzzling series of labels-from gifted toddler to defiant child, from superior IQ to college drop-out, from fun-loving boy to social misfit. At a loss to help her depressed 23-year-old son, Nilla persists in developing a "Circle of Friends" to surround Daniel with the supports he needs as a newly-diagnosed young adult on the autism spectrum. Through well-told, illuminating anecdotes, Puzzled gets it right-all the ways high-functioning autism disturbs, disrupts and enriches family life; full of rich context absent most autism literature; and the enduring truth that love prevails over disability. Anyone who has ever tried to understand a child, spouse, parent or friend who is puzzlingly different will rejoice in Nilla Childs' charming, hopeful book.

Nilla Dudley Childs lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina in a one-story stucco cottage with her husband Steve. Nilla has been a mother (her most important career) for thirty years. While smothering her two sons Daniel and David with maternal attention, she helped her husband Steve market his fine-art paintings, portraits, and films. In the 1990s Nilla directed art museum education in Logan, Utah and at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia. She blossomed as Creative Product Editor with Hallmark Cards in Kansas City. Nilla attended Mount Holyoke College; she holds a B.A. in Liberal Studies from Emory University and a M.A. in American Studies from Utah State. Great-granddaughter of George Palmer Putnam of G. P. Putnam’s Sons Publishing, Nilla naturally inherited a strong love of writing and books. Growing up, she adopted the persistent, can-do attitude of her great-grandfather’s wife, Amelia Earhart.