Thanks (or perhaps no thanks) to movies like Rain Man, autistic people are commonly perceived as distant, robotic genius-freaks who mumble to themselves and throw fits when they're touched. Actually, the spectrum of autistic disorders ranges from insular cases to people so high-functioning that they've never been properly diagnosed.
Autism can be especially hard to spot in young children, since kids develop at different rates and it's all but impossible to characterize any toddler behavior as "abnormal." Writer-historian Paul Collins was stunned when his 3-year-old son Morgan was diagnosed as autistic, because he'd assumed Morgan's unwillingness to communicate and his advanced intellect were just natural personality quirks, common to a child of two bookish, artsy parents. Suddenly thrust into the culture of early-intervention programs and helpful-but-aloof clinical therapists, Collins has trouble understanding how a child who can read and do math years ahead of his age could turn, in the space of one doctor's visit, into a potential lifelong burden.
Before the diagnosis, Collins had been working on a piece about "Peter The Wild Boy," the 18th-century social curiosity now identified as one of the earliest documented cases of autism. Collins folds that story into his book Not Even Wrong, which alternates between famous case studies and a memoir of Collins' first six months of coping with a new family dynamic. The historical material doesn't hold the same intense fascination as the personal anecdotes, but Collins' side trips—to seeing-eye-dog training programs, the corridors of Microsoft, and other spots tangentially related to an understanding of human disability—are nonetheless essential to what Not Even Wrong is saying.
To a large extent, Collins wants to redefine autism for himself and for his readers. He doesn't seem to think that parents of autistic children should focus entirely on training their kids to function in the mainstream; since autism often gives as much as it takes, Collins wants people to view it differently than the multitude of afflictions that complicate children's lives. His aim—and his inspiration to parents of all children, autistic or not—is a greater appreciation and nurturing of Morgan's gifts, even as those gifts make his son difficult. After all, it's not like anyone ever really has it easy.