Young-adult edition of ‘Far From the Tree’ a compelling read on families with differences

The many wise and helpful statements that Andrew Solomon makes in “Far From the Tree,” his study of how families accommodate children who are significantly different from their parents, include this one:

“There is no contradiction between loving someone and feeling burdened by that person.”

Published in 2012, “Far From the Tree” won a National Book Critics Circle award and other honors for its seriously researched exploration of how families raised children with disabilities and differences, including deafness, dwarfism, Down syndrome and autism.

Now Simon & Schuster has published a young-adult edition of Solomon’s valuable book. Working with adapter Laurie Calkhoven, an experienced writer for children, Solomon has slimmed the text and moved the extensive footnotes and bibliography sections online.

But they have not compromised the quality and seriousness of Solomon’s research and writing. Had I come to this book unaware, and it not been labeled a young-adult edition, I would never have known. Adult readers who may have been daunted by the size of the original book should welcome this more compact version.

Solomon comes to this subject with both experience and compassion. He grew up with two strong differences from his parents: He was dyslexic, for which he received strong family support, and he is gay, for which he did not.

In each chapter, he draws on detailed interviews with parents and children (those who are able to speak) and sifts research and data to portray the challenges families face and the emotional rewards they may enjoy. He is honest and particularly good at examining situations where distinctions between disability and identity are hard to define or may be in dispute. This includes the Deaf community, in which many activists oppose cochlear implants and claim deafness as a full identity, not a deficit; and the worlds of Little People (dwarfs) and autism, where similar assertions are made. As Solomon points out, a danger of arguing that being deaf is not a disability would be the loss of ADA protections and rights to accommodations in hospitals and courtrooms, for example.

His chapter on Down syndrome, an inherited condition, forthrightly addresses how that syndrome can be diagnosed in utero through amniocentesis, giving parents the option to terminate that pregnancy (and thereby placing Down syndrome in the middle of abortion debates). Yet, he points out, no text can predict how severe the disability might be, or what the child might grow up to be like: “Disabled children, like nondisabled children, thrive on attention, engagement, stimulation, and hope.”

He also talks with former musical prodigies and their parents, including pianist Lang Lang and violinist Joshua Bell and his mother, about the disruptive nature of that experience: “Like a disability, prodigiousness forces parents to redesign their lives around the special needs of their child.”

Extrapolating from various studies, Solomon concludes that at least 8,000 women in the U.S. keep children conceived by rape each year. “Society is likely to judge both mother and child unkindly,” he writes, and those mothers often have complex feelings toward their own children. “More than any other parents coping with exceptional children, women with rape-conceived children are trying to quell the darkness within themselves in order to give their progeny light.”

In “Crime,” he explores what happens to families when children commit crimes, pointing out that the community tends to indict the moral characters of the parents as well: “Parents of criminals live in a territory of anger and guilt, struggling to forgive both their children and themselves.”

Given recent bathroom law controversies, his “Transgender” chapter is timelier than ever, with succinct explanations of such descriptors as gender

fluid and genderqueer. Typical of this nuanced book, the transpeople he interviews have found, often after long struggles, individual solutions to identity and self-expression. Solomon’s conclusion to this chapter could sum up his belief about many of these differences: “It is time to focus on the child rather than the ... label.”