There's a Boy in Here

As a baby, Sean Barron seemed almost normal. Though he cried incessantly and hated being held, his parents told themselves it was just a phase. But as he grew older, his behavior became increasingly strange and uncontrollable, and the truth became all too clear: something was very, very wrong. When Judy Barron and her husband Ron sought professional help, they were brusquely told that their son suffered from an incurable condition that would only get worse with time. They had never even heard the word before: autism. In a room full of adults, Sean could not even recognize his mother and father. He rarely spoke and communicated through grunts and screams. He teased his little sister unmercifully. He developed intense fixations, such as an overwhelming fear of left-hand turns that made every family car trip a nightmare of temper tantrums. Life with Sean was impossible, but despite the odds, the Barrons refused to give up. Year after year, they gave him the drugs prescribed by condescending doctors and followed the programs devised by patronizing psychologists. And though nothing seemed to work, they sometimes caught fleeting glimpses of the helpless child inside the stranger who shared their home. They were determined to free him, and somehow their love, their rage, their patience, their sheer humanness reached him at last. A new Sean Barron appeared to tell of the years stolen from him by his mysterious disease. His account is utterly fascinating, for he remembers it all - the fury, the terrifying isolation, the desperate desire to reach out, and the paralyzing fear that made it impossible ... until his family's indomitable and courageous resolve finally released him. Told in the alternating voices of mother and son, There's a Boy in Here is at once the heartrending yet inspiring story of a mother's unceasing efforts to understand her child's bizarre, destructive behavior, and the poignant self-portrait of a boy trapped in a maze of compulsion and obsession. It is an astonishing chronicle of one family's terrifying ordeal and the miraculous awakening that brought it to an end.