I was really interested in reading this book. I have a degree in psychology and I’m almost finished with a masters as well so I wanted learn more about Asperger’s and about the autism spectrum. This book was really interesting and I learned a lot from it.
Although this is not directly my field I always think it’s important to understand as much as possible about things like these.
I would prefer this book as a physical book mainly because I like to go back to my textbooks, but still this was a good book.

This book is a great tool for anyone looking for a layman's terms guide to understanding Asperger's and Autism as a whole. Reitman did a great job of sharing his story as well as presenting a betting way of understanding autism and how to help those with the diagnosis.

Aspertools: The Practical Guide for Understanding and Embracing Asperger's, Autism Spectrum Disorders, and Neurodiversity
By Harold Reitman, M.D. with Pati Fizzano and Rebecca Reitman

April 2015

Non-fiction

Although this book was published in 2015, I received a complimentary digital copy from NetGalley in exchange for an unbiased review.
December 2017

Honestly, it was interesting for me to read the mixed reviews when the book was first published. Many comments expressed frustration that there are no “tools” in Aspertools. I think the rest of the title explains more precisely the purpose of the book: “The Practical Guide for Understanding and Embracing Asperger's, Autism Spectrum Disorders, and Neurodiversity”. It’s more of a guide written from a father’s perspective of the journey he experienced with his daughter.

“In other words, don’t view the Aspertools in this book as designed to help someone who has Asperger’s; view them as designed to help an individual who has many special qualities and who also happens to have a few Asperger’s traits, or even the whole enchilada we call Asperger’s syndrome.”

It is often difficult for people to understand and embrace the challenges that both the child and parent experience life with “neurodiversity”. I also found comments in other reviews interesting regarding the author’s reference to his own self importance. As a parent with a child possessing such unique individual qualities, I can understand how one can feel “lost or forgotten” while immersed in the care of a gifted child. I am also a well educated medical professional who often feels inept with the overwhelming responsibility to ensure my child succeeds.

Helped a lot personally and professionally. Use these tool with my son as well as my clients. Definately glad i snagged this book

In the preface of this book, the author describes asking a college president friend what he considers the biggest problem with the education system in the U.S. The friend replied it was that children are placed in the same classroom for the simple reason they were born in the same year when not all children of any one age, are wired the same way. The notion of “different” wiring is easily seen in children with high function autism. Although, the term “Aspergers” is no longer officially used to describe people with high functioning autism, it continues to be associated with a specific set of traits and behaviors. These include hypersensitivity, physical and social awkwardness, inattention, and poor organizational and time management skills. This book offers parents of “aspies” methods to help them become more tuned into their child’s unique way of perceiving the world, and provides them concrete steps to help their child manage in a world they may often find overwhelming.

Aspertools: The Practical Guide for Understanding and Embracing Aspergers, Autism Spectrum Disorder and Neurodiversity
by Harold Reitman
2015
HCI Books

Many parents, siblings and caretakers have, at one time, had a child with autism and have struggled to reach that child. This is a concise and thorough guide, written by a parent of a child with Aspergers, not as a professional authority, to share what he has learned from working with his amazing daughter, Rebecca.
Rebecca has Aspergers, had 23 brain tumors and underwent 2 major brain surgeries at the Mayo Clinic as a toddler. She went on to be accepted to the prestigious University of Georgia where she earned a degree in Discrete Mathematics. She then decided she wanted to work with others with Aspergers, and has been working with them since.
This gives you a complete understanding of how the person with Aspergers feels as well as suggestions of how to help them deal with it, and help you to deal with it as well.
One of the biggest problems in education is that we divide children into classrooms not based on their abilities or strengths but by the year of their birth. The one size fits all approach does not work and is especially obvious when working with Autism.
Enlightening and positive, this is a must have guide. Its clear, no-nonsense approach could work with many children.
Thank you to HCI Books for sending this for review.

In this book written by Dr Reitman he talks about life with neurotypical and neuro diverse people in our lives. He believes that labels aren't needed because all brains really are different. With his daughter Rebecca and her coach Pati Fizzano they talk about ways to help get through all kinds of situations with love and patience.
For me this book was very well written, each chapter dealing with different aspects of situations you might encounter with someone on the spectrum. Each chapter is broken into 3 parts; the first part is Dr. Reitman explaining the character trait and examples of how he did not deal well with it when Rebecca was younger. The second section is from Pati Fizzano as a special needs teacher and how best to deal with the situations from her perspective; and the last part is from Rebecca. Rebecca explains from her perspective as a neurodiverse woman and child what she was dealing with and how to handle those situations.
As a mother of someone on the spectrum it was very helpful to see all sides. As Rebecca and Pati point out it is not always easy for people to explain why they react to certain things the way they do. Throughout the book patience and love are stronger encouraged.
This book is very insightful and reassuring. I believe I have taken away a better understanding of neurodiverse characteristics, and in the end no matter whether someone you love is on the spectrum of not love a nd patience is most important.

Was initially very excited to read this book, but unfortunately i could not finish it, Its written about neurotypical people and I was so hoping this book would explore further. Its good for explaining to others how the nt may feel but not for the person with aspergers. I found it a bit frustrating which is why I didnt finish it.

I would recommend Aspertools for anyone that has, works with or knows someone with Asperger's Syndrome.

Having a preteen with Asperger's diagnosed several years ago, this book is an asset to us as parents. It has very easily put into place tips and tools for living life with an Aspie. It includes different perspectives and gives us a glimpse into the world of an individual with Asperger's.

Highly recommend for parents and educators!

Special thanks to Netgalley and HCI Books for an opportunity to read and review this book.

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

Subtitled "The Practical Guide for Understanding and Embracing Asperger's, Autism Spectrum, and Neurodiversity" this book is aimed at understanding and learning how to deal with these conditions. Asperger syndrome (AS) is named after the Austrian pediatrician Hans Asperger who described children with the features 1944. It's thought to affect some forty million people worldwide.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD), is a range of conditions classified as neurodevelopmental disorders. This syndrome includes Asperger's, but this author refers primarily to Aspergers, and makes little mention of Autism. The word itself comes from the Greek word autos, meaning self or same. It's this same root that appears in autobiography, autopilot, and so on.

This book is available in both print and electronic format, but I have to say once again that the Kindle version is a disaster! The PDF version was much more readable, but I read most of this in Kindle because I always have my phone with me and it was more convenient to read it there.

This is a book which was designed for print format, evidently without an ounce of thought being given to how it would appear as an ebook. Amateur reviewers like me do not merit a print version, and it's fine because I'd rather have the trees than the pages, but it does mean that we have to put up with some pretty rough-and unready versions of books from time to time. It's well known that turning a print format book into a Kindle book to be read on Amazon's crappy Kindle app will as likely ruin it as render it readable if great care isn't taken.

I recommend using B&N's Nook or PDF format. Anything but Kindle, which in my experience will destroy any book that isn't formatted in the blandest and most vanilla of manners. Full disclosure: I am an arch enemy of Amazon not only for the fact that they're too big and powerful, but for their business practices (or lack of same) and also from my personal dealings with them on my own projects. I will never do business with them again, and neither will my estate when I;m gone, so if you think I'm biased, you're perfectly correct! That doesn't alter the fact that Kindle is for crap though as I shall hereinafter demonstrate.

Note though that this was an ARC, and one;s hope is that these issues will be fixed before the published e-version is released lest it become an aversion, but how it came to be this way in the first place is something that demands investigation. From page one this book was literally all over the place, with misaligned text, random red text in places whereas the rest of the text was white on my phone. I set my phone this way to save on power drain: white text on a black background uses less energy than the reverse, but switching it to black text on white background made no difference to the issues I'm discussing here.

The contents followed straight on from the book details page with no break, and the word 'contents' was randomly capitalized so that it read: COnTEnTS. The FOREwORd and the ACknOwLEdgmEnTS were just as bad. You can see a trend there: d, g, m, n, w are all lower case. Everything else is upper case. Why? I have no idea, but the Kindle conversion 'process' is well-known to me for this kind of inexplicable mangling of books.

This was followed by a truly poorly formatted contents list in which nothing was aligned. Some of the text was blue, indicating a link, and tapping that took you to the correct page, but there was no way to get back to the contents from that page since it wasn't linked in reverse. The real problem though, was that only a few contents items were actually linked - the rest was plain white text and tapping on it achieved nothing, other than swiping the screen if you tapped too close to the edge, of course!

There were multiple images of snowflakes separating each section of the book because every snowflake is different, right? That's actually not true (there are identical snowflakes!), but this was used as a metaphor for each brain being different, which I do buy. The problem from a formatting point of view was that while these snowflakes looked pretty and elegant in the iPad, in the Kindle version they were a complete disaster.

When you reverse the colors (white text on black background), the blobby snowflakes stand out like a sore thumb. Worse than this, they're all over the place: spread over three or more screens instead of being confined to one dividing screen - again a problem with the formatting for the ebook being ignored completely. Several instances of these snowflakes spread across five screens! That's way too much real estate for a frivolous affectation which ought to have been dispensed with in the ebook version.

I recommend reading the PDF format rather than the sad Amazon format which is all Kindled up - that is unless the actual published version has all these problems fixed. In the iPad, the image of the snowflakes makes sense - it's in the shape of a brain and part of the spinal cord. If this had been one small image instead of apparently being composed of multiple tiles, then it would have looked a lot better on the smart phone than it does in the ARC that I got.

The book has a preface and an introduction, both of which I ignored as is my habit. They almost never contribute anything worth reading in my experience, so I routinely skip them. I prefer my introduction to be chapter one, so that's where I started. Everything else is nothing but pretention and OCD addiction to tradition. The chapters have chapter quotes which are another no-no to me and I skipped those, too. If you have to quote someone else to make your case for you, you're not making your case.

I assume the print version has drop-caps. Frankly I've never seen the point of these even in a print book, but they should have been eliminated for the ebook version because what we got instead was, on the first screen for chapter one: some left over snowflakes, the chapter number and title, a thick line, a quote from Mark Twain - a well-known expert on Autism - not!, another thick line, an anonymous quote, another thick line, a 'helpful hint' which was really just common sense, an apparently random number 7 (which may or may not have been a footnote, and which doesn't work in an ebook - better to have a tap-able link instead), and finally the start of the chapter - at the very bottom of the screen. The start of the chapter was the letter E. That's it. That's all. The next screen contained the rest of the truncated word which was evidently intended to be 'Every'. Drop-caps should be dropped. Literally, but especially so in ebooks.

Throughout the book, people on the autism spectrum were referred to as 'Aspies' which seemed really condescending to me. I don't know if this is considered a term of endearment or otherwise acceptable within that community, but repeatedly reading phrases like "...it might not be true of your Aspie..." just sounded wrong to me - like these people were objects to be owned rather than individuals who needed careful consideration. That's just my feeling on the topic.

The author's daughter (Rebecca Reitman) adds sections here and there with her own thoughts since she has to cope with this condition, and these are listed under the title 'thought from rebecca reitman' - and that's exactly how it's headed in the Kindle version: all lower case, no differentiation with font, which even Amazon's crappy Kindle app can usually handle. It was really hard to see where these sections began and ended.

There was a similar problem with the other contributor, Pati Fizzano, a teacher of autism spectrum kids, whose contributions were fine in the iPad, but which seemed always to be competing among those annoying snowflakes for attention in the Kindle version on my smartphone. Once again, the book was formatted for the printed page and apparently zero thought was given to the experience that ebook users, who might want the convenience of reading on their phone, would be subject to.

Those complaints aside, the book did contain educational and useful content which is well worth knowing. The topics were rather repetitive, and while it never hurts to reinforce ideas, especially with someone who is on the spectrum, as a reader I did find myself wondering from time to time whether the book was actually aimed at those who wished to at least understand (as it was in my case) and help people with these disorders, or whether it was aimed at people who actually had these disorders!

I was reminded several times of assorted things, for example, that Rebecca Reitman had “...twenty-three vascular tumors in her brain," and also had "two life-saving [against all odds] brain surgeries...” While I sympathize and really feel for anyone who is in that kind of situation, telling me something like that once really makes an impact. I wasn't likely to forget it! Repeatedly telling me was more likely to make me honestly wish I'd never heard it! This wasn't the only thing that was repeated.

Anyway, the topics covered were these:

Anxiety
Hypersenses: Senses on Steroids
Observation: Elementary, My Dear Watson
The Meltdown
The Safe Place
Rudeness, Truth Telling, and Manners
Transitions
Routines
Structure and Positive Activities
Obsessions and Hyper-Interests
Social Awkwardness
Limit Choices to Avoid "No!"
Instilling Street Smarts
Taking Things Literally: "Why Did They Say I'm Not Playing With a Full Deck?"
Specifics: Say What You Mean, Mean What You Say
Preventing Overwhelm: Breaking Down Big Jobs Into Smaller Tasks
Setting Goals
Rules, Rewards, and Consequences
Checklists: The Indispensable Tool
Time management: Tools for getting 139 Your Aspie to Be on Time
Overlapping Conditions
It's Not About You
Love Unconditionally
Note that the '139' in the 'Time Management' section is actually in the contents list - it's a page number that's out of place.

There's an afterword, which I also skipped as I do all afterwords, epilogues, etc. There are three appendices chock full of resources and references.

Despite all of the formatting issues and the repetitiveness in parts, I really enjoyed reading this. it was interesting, educational, and sometimes heartbreaking, and I commend it as a worthy read. This isn't the first book I've read on this topic, so much of it I already knew, but it was nice to be remind! Much of it is actually nothing more than common sense when you learn a few things about people with these conditions, and there's the rub: it's not like they have a sign, or they're in a wheelchair, or have a certain 'look' about them.

It's not like they're missing a limb, or are carrying a white stick, or wearing a hearing aid, but it would behoove everyone to give anyone who is behaving - to our routine eyes - slightly oddly, because it may well be someone like this who needs our concern and compassion, not our Trump-mentality, knee-jerk condemnation. I enjoyed the comments by the authors daughter, even though they usually echoed what I'd read in the preceding chapter. They were delightfully blunt and to the point, and I would definitely read a biography if she wrote one. I think it would be interesting. In the absence of that, this book does an excellent job of opening eyes and hearts to people who need our understanding and support.

This book is a great resource for anyone who has Aspergers, who lives or works with someone who does, or simply wants to be acquainted with it to better understand it since everyone likely knows at least one person who has Aspergers.

My brother has Aspergers and there was a lot of things growing up that we knew were different about him, yet since it is high functioning, he wasn't obviously autistic, and was sometimes prone to teasing. Many people do not realize that certain eccentricities are tell tell signs of it and just call a person "weird". The greater awareness of the general public is a great thing not only because it can help in diagnosis, but it can also help those with it avoid teasing as others understand what they are going through and that is, in large part, beyond their control.

This book does just that! It explains things from different perspectives and explains how those with Aspergers typically get along in school and work and public in general. It also explains the nuances of their personality that others may not understand.

This is a great read that I will be referring back to as needed!

Aspertools (which doesn't contain any tools) is really a memoir of one father's experience with his daughter who has Aspergers. I thought, from the title and blurb, it would be helpful for a person with Aspergers to adapt to the neurotypical world. Instead, it's more geared toward teaching neurotypical individuals what it's like to experience life with Aspergers. It might be helpful to give to grandparents and others who are learning to adapt themselves.
Thanks to NetGalley, the publisher and the author for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Very practical book that explains well about Asperger's without the complicated medical therms. Easy to read, short chapters about each trait of Asperger's.

I hope that my review finds Dr Reitman. My son has aspergers so this book really hits home for me. I really appreciate this novel and its content of advice and tips etc. NO one child is the same. This novel prompted me to search for Dr Reitman on youtube and I found this : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVnDnO9WhMI
I totally and completely relate and I am just glad to have come across this novel on here.
I love this book and appreciate Dr Reitman. Thank you sir , for offering me some insight into my sons disorder. I ask everyone to remember this " There is ABILITY in DISABILITY". These children and individuals are wonderful human beings.

This was a super simple and easy to read book that had a lot of good tips on helping anyone who's not completely neurotypical. The author seems to have the best of intentions and does a great job of keeping everything positive. I will put some of the tips to use in my own life.

The only negative was the weird paragraph about single mothers in chapter 22. Not sure what that was all about.

I'm going to make sure we have this one on the shelf if we don't already.

This book is an important read. Who hasn’t encountered someone who has Asperger’s traits or syndrome or who falls on the autism spectrum disorder? Kudos to author Harold Reitman for advancing understanding and advocacy for everyone! Each chapter tackles a new topic relevant to Asperger’s traits. The book is clear, concise, practical, pragmatic and easy to read. I recommend it to parents, teachers, family and friends of anyone considered atypical. I took off one star because I felt like the author may have concluded that all introverts are Aspies too. He reminisces frequently about several people he has met that are not extroverted or are passionate about something and concludes their lack of extroversion means they had Asperger’s. I feel that over-diagnosing has become a bit of a problem in modern day society.

This book is helpful in understanding what some of the students in a classroom experience. Even gifted students can have other issues affecting learning -- the 2E (twice exceptional) students. As a teacher, I have seen these issues and think that this book is helpful.

I like that this book offers three different perspectives on living with autism spectrum disorders and other types of neurological differences. While the author is a medical doctor, he is writing from the perspective of the parent of an adult child with what used to be called Asperger's syndrome. The book also features tips from an exceptional student education (ESE) teacher and from his daughter, who is on the spectrum.

The book offers practical tools, at least some of which are likely to be helpful for a wide audience. I like that it emphasized individual differences and that neurodiversity is becoming more the rule than the exception. I also really like the way the author helped readers understand what life might be like for people on the spectrum with frequent "Imagine you're an Aspie" thought experiments. Those were, for me, probably the most useful part of the book.

I did find the text somewhat repetitive, and it didn't go into as much detail on some topics as I would have preferred.

I was provided an advanced reader's copy (ARC) through Net Galley that I volunteered to review. Because I have not seen the final published version, I cannot comment on the final formatting or how well edited the book is. The ARC I reviewed had significant editing and formatting problems that may or may not be resolved. Assuming all of these problems have been satisfactorily cleaned up, this might actually be a 4-star book.

I was interested I viewing this book for several reasons.

It is the fruit of a collaboration between father and daughter, The daughter is a teacher who works with children with special needs. ' She had had her difficulties as a child herself though many of these were not recognised as having something to do with asperger's until she was diagnosed owed as an adult. Both father and daughter appear to wish to make up for lost time......

This is a very practical and pragmatic approach to the whole issue of five ding solutions to whatever problems are preventing the aspie from getting on with life.
Can't stand the sensation of water in your eyes in the shower? Then get some goggles. Problem solved. Can't follow some basic instructions? Then break them down I to manageable chunks and make them more specific. And so on.

There are chapters on teaching metaphorical expressions such as 'raining cats and dogs' which are often a challenge for the literary-minded aspie alongside others on managing meltdowns (which are not the same as tantrums) and teaching streets arts a d Internet savvy in a world where predators do exist.

The pragmatism here includes an 'if the cap fits approach to this problem solving. It may not be a case of asperger's, but....

Stigma and shame can be powerful deterrents indeed for either parent or offspring to seek help. The difficulties the aspire may face are real and obdurate indeed. Also, my experience now says that children are a whole lot more savvy about not just the autism spectrum, but about every other kind of learning difficulty and any kind d of label is a label! The teacher wishing to do good must tread carefully in large classes where one size is still supposed to fit all....

As a teacher I might in time get the odd light bulb idea after reading this - time will tell.

There is a vein of a vigorously healthy socialisation and work ethic ethos that I was keen in, in a world where the question of what we will do when the robots take over rears its head. Unspoken is the concern of what may happen if an angry unsocialised young person may get up to if there isn't strong intervention to go out and meet the big bad world head on. There is the creative type of person who may well ways desire a good deal of personal space and autonomy.

Overall though, this is is another very useful addition to the many books that exist to help any individual for whom the cap fits to find a successful niche in society.

This is a helpful book with lots of information and support for parents and children who have Autism. As a practitioner, I am concerned that the author is not a trained professional in this field, and while I find the information authentic from a parent's perspective, I wish it was more driven as a parent's experience and perspective rather than as a resource book for practitioners (children and parents, too). There is a wealth of information available in this book, and I don't want to throw the baby out with the bath water, so I gave it four stars overall. Thank you for the opportunity to read this book. It was a great experience, and I do plan to spend more time with the information presented.