Book review: Let me hear your voice by Catherine Maurice

Title: Let me hear your voice : A family’s triumph over autism
Author: Catherine Maurice
Pages: 326

Let me hear your voice is the story of a family in which two of the children are autistic. Autism is a developmental disorder characterised by very poor verbal and non-verbal communication skills coupled with strange behaviours like hand-flapping, rocking, spinning, etc.

When Catherine’s daughter Anne-Marie was diagnosed with autism in the late 80’s it was widely beleived that autism was incurable. Worse, many people beleived that autism was caused by a distant or emotionally unavailable mother (the ‘refrigerator mother’) who failed to bond with her child. Catherine refused to accept that her daugher’s condition would not improve. She and her husband Marc set about devouring every piece of autism related literature they could find.

Eventually they stumbled across the work of Dr. Ivar Lovaas from the University of California. Dr. Lovaas was using something called behavioral therapy on very young autistic children. He had managed to bring about significant improvement in almost 50% of the children. Catherine hired a couple of therapists and set up an intensivse behavioural therapy program within a couple of months of her daughter’s diagnosis.

Her daughter responded so well to the program that she was soon indistinguishable from her peers. She was enrolled in a normal school and performed well.

Catherine was devastated when her son Michel was diagnosed as autistic. He was underwent the same home-based behavioural therapy program that his sister Anne-Marie did. Michel did not adjust to the intensive therapy as quickly as sister did, he screamed and cried and threw tantrums when forced to pay attention. Catherine and the therapists went through hell trying to get Michel to calm down. Eventually Michel began to respond to the therapy and he too improved enough to be enrolled in a normal school.

Catherine does not tell us how well her children are currently doing – do they still show signs of autism? Can they live independently? Are they capable of experiencing complex human emotions like jealousy and love?

Roughly 10% of people with autism are high-functioning i.e. they have gifts like photographic memories, fantastic math abilities, etc. I sincerely hope that Catherine’s children belong to the high-functioning category and go on to fulfill their potential.