George and Sam

For two years Charlotte Moore wrote her highly acclaimed Mind the Gap column in the Guardian which described in a groundbreaking way daily life with her two autistic sons, George and Sam, and their non-autistic younger brother, Jake.

In George and Sam she tells the full story of the three children: their births, their babyhood, the gradual realization of the two older boys? condition, the slow path to formal diagnosis, and the continuing impact on the family.

George had been a precocious baby: walking at nine months, knowing several words by his first birthday and able to sing a number of carols completely accurately by his second.

Yet he was difficult too: hardly sleeping, a bundle of nervous energy.

Sam was completely different, a placid, ?easy? baby. Two very different boys. Yet by the age of four and a half both had been diagnosed with autism.

At the time it hardly seemed possible that autism could occur twice in one family ? though statistics now suggest that this is not such a rare occurrence.A great deal of scientific research is currently going into autism, and Charlotte Moore describes what scientists now know about this most mysterious of conditions.She also writes intriguingly of her private theories based on her own experiences and instincts.

She is convinced that George and Sam were pre-natally autistic, not afflicted by some catastrophe in their childhood, and that there can be no cure.

At the same time she believes fervently in the power of some interventionist techniques to improve the quality of life for both the child and its parents.

She writes about Applied Behaviour Analysis, about Auditory Integration Therapy, about gluten-free, casein-free diets. 'I've tried a lot of the treatments, and have gained something from most of them...The only therapy left on my wish list is swimming with dolphins, and that's only because it sounds like fun.?But George and Sam is rather more than a dispassionate account of a medical condition and its treatments.

In describing the boys? attitudes to food, their ways with language, their tv and video interests, their seeming lack of fear when faced with physical danger, among many other topics, she provides a vivid, close-up insight into autism and how it is experienced within a family.

It?s an invaluable book for anyone who has an interest in childhood and child development.