Conventional wisdom says that if you know one child with autism, you only know one child with autism. Yet, bestselling authors, who are also autism experts, are eager to share sage advice that they hope will help families dealing with the challenges of autism.
Several of these experts are on the autism spectrum themselves or are parents or siblings of individuals with autism, and their success stories and the joys and challenges of their journeys are often extremely helpful to the rest of us.
The sobering statistic is that 1 in 59 children in the U.S. has been identified with an autism spectrum disorder, according to Centers for Disease Control data from 2018. That number, which has been climbing steadily for more than a decade, translates to more than 3.5 million Americans on the autism spectrum.
What it also means is that nearly everyone in your community either has a child or adult with autism in their life or knows someone who has a loved one with autism.
