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Book Review: Living, Loving and Laughing with Asperger's (Volume 1) by Dave Angel

Living, Loving and Laughing with Asperger's: 52 tips, stories and inspirational ideas for parents of children with Asperger's (Volume 1) by Dave Angel is a free ebook which is well worth reading.
At 134 pages, it's fairly light reading and since most articles run for 1 and a half pages, it's very easy to pick up and put down. It makes great reading while You're waiting for someone or using public transport.

The book itself is divided into three sections, the first and in my opinion, the best, section contains 26 tips from Dave. The second section contains another 19 reader-submitted tips and the last section, which is thankfully short contains 7 real life stories.

I can't say that I liked the last section which felt “braggy”, with parents and grandparents basically saying how great their kids are. As a parent of two boys who struggle both socially and academically, I don't really enjoy hearing how great other kids are. The first two sections of the book however are great - and they comprise the bulk of the book.

The book covers a whole range of topics aimed at people of various ages though particularly for parents of pre-teen children. Of course there's some good material here for parents of older children too. It covers a vast array of topics including; social skills, using lists and charts,special interests, mentors, communicating with teachers, advocacy, business, homework, sensory issues, food, meltdowns and vacations.

Dave has been writing about Asperger's since 2006 on his blog at http://parentingaspergers.com/blog and most of these tips come from his daily emails. If you've been following his site for a while, there's not a lot that's particularly new here but it is very handy to have all the tips collected in a single resource.

If you're new to Dave’s site then this is a great introduction.

Living, Loving and Laughing with Asperger's: 52 tips, stories and inspirational ideas for parents of children with Asperger's (Volume 1) by Dave Angel is available free of charge from Amazon US, Amazon UK and Amazon Australia.  It's also available as a direct ePub download from Smashwords.

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