When he was talking about his family and their experiences, it was a great book. The sources he pulled in would be unneeded for pretty much anyone who would choose to read this book, though. They frequently disrupted the flow.

Also, I was kind of put off by his stance that there's no label that would be useful for his son's learning/emotional problems - yes, labels can suck, and yes, everyone should be treated individually, but pragmatically they are needed and refusal to use them would make a lot of professionals' lives more difficult.

I really wanted to like this book. And in my defense, I really tried to. But, try as I might, it just didn't work out.

The premise of this book is a good one -- the story of parents who realize early on that their son may be gay, and their journey in helping him grow to accept who he is. Unfortunately, despite the fact that the book is technically well written (the author/father, John Schwartz, is a journalist, after all), the story left me shaking my head more often than I expected, or thought necessary.

I got the distinct feeling, while reading of Joe Schwartz's troubles during his early years in school, that his parents were a bit too eager to ascribe his various academic and behavioural issues to his sexuality -- a fact that bothered me, especially given the fact that the child himself had yet to even acknowledge said sexuality. He's gifted? Of course he is, he's gay! He's disruptive in class? Of course he is, he's dealing with being gay! Someone should tell these parents that it is, in fact, possible to be straight and gifted, or straight and disruptive in class. There's being supportive of your child (possibly) being part of the LGBT community -- and then there's being a bit *too* supportive. It seemed to me as though nothing was *ever* Joe's fault.

I understand that LGBT kids often experience emotional and behavioural issues that are related to their sexuality, but honestly, these parents seemed to connect *everything* to the fact that he was gay. And while I understand the reticence that parents often feel when approached with the possibility that their child may have a neurological condition like autism or Asperger's, the absolute refusal of these parents to even consider those possibilities is mind-blowing. Don't get me wrong -- there's absolutely nothing wrong with a child being gay. But there's also absolutely nothing wrong with a child being autistic, or having Asperger's syndrome.

I also can't help but wonder if their absolute refusal to consider medication for him might have made a difference in Joe's life. Kids who are mentally healthy don't end up stark naked in their parents' bathroom, having taken an overdose of Benadryl, and it certainly seems as though Joe's subsequent stay in a psychiatric facility and his being placed on medication made a substantial, positive difference in his life. It's like everything in his life before the overdose was hell, but once he came out of the psych facility, everything was suddenly fine. Was that due to the fact that, finally, Joe had been medicated properly? Could the suicide attempt have been avoided entirely if only his parents hadn't resolutely refused to consider the possibility of his being medicated? There is nothing shameful in having a child who suffers from depression, but it seems as though the Schwartzes go to huge leaps in order to convince themselves, and others, that their son couldn't possibly be depressed. Did it really have to get to the point where he nearly took his own life to convince them otherwise?

I also found that the suicide attempt, rather than acting as a turning point in the story, felt like it was thrown in and then glossed over as quickly as possible. It was almost buried in the book among all of the statistics and studies. I felt cheated, to be honest. After all the build-up and detail of this boy's life, this huge event occurs in his life and his father chooses to simply brush past it? I know that having a child attempt to take his own life must be a horrific thing, but if Schwartz chose to include it in his book -- and, in fact, chooses to begin his book with it -- then he should at least be willing to deal with it in at least a little more detail.

(As a sidenote: the passage in which Schwartz sits in the ER with his son trying to force feed him activated charcoal struck me as incredibly odd. Wouldn't a suspected case of overdose be considered serious enough that time would be of the essence, especially since the kid wasn't even totally conscious? Certainly it seems to me as though the situation would be urgent enough that the medical staff wouldn't have a reaction along the lines of "Oh, see if you can get him to drink this." I'm not saying that the father is making up these details, but man....that passage struck me as being ridiculous and incredibly hard to believe.)

As I said: I really wanted to like this book. It had the potential to be an excellent resource for parents who are raising a child who is a part of the LGBT community. But I personally found that what could have been an excellent book just ended up being a way for the Schwartzes to use their son's experiences to say "Look how awesome we are as parents! We supported our son from the beginning and made sure that everyone catered to him his entire life!"

Sorry, Mr. Schwartz. I'm not buying it.

A wonderful blend of memoir and research. The reason this book has the "disabilities" shelf tag is not because of the gay - but because of some other issues Joseph dealt with, especially in school.

I wish I could have read this book when my son was in the public school system. Many of the author's experiences rang true, especially the interest by school employees in diagnosing his child with labels from the DSM that reflect psychological trends rather than behavioral reality. It seems that the school system felt more comfortable declaring a child autistic than attempting to understand his sexual orientation.

Schwartz gives an excellent description of the ways in which the closet creates emotional and psychological stress in gay children, which in turn makes it difficult for them to socialize into the classroom. The Schwartzes were strong advocates for their son, spending thousands of dollars for therapy that their insurance didn't cover, and regularly confronting teachers and school administrators with their concerns about the ways their son was being mistreated in the classroom. The fact that they were not wealthy and had modest means, being a single income family with three children, helped me to relate to their story. Although Schwartz makes clear that the book describes one person's struggle and that the experience cannot be generalized, I recommended this book highly to any parent whose child doesn't quite fit in because he or she is "oddly normal."

Written by the father of a gay child, this book is really more geared toward parents than any other audience. There is a lot of material on interacting with schools, teachers, and therapists; sometimes it feels like the author did all this research... so of course it has to be jammed in. It's not a bad book, but Joseph's actual story gets a bit lost in the shuffle.

This one has sad parts but is ultimately a book about resilience, which was inspiring.

In many ways, the story of John Schwartz and his son is not normal. This is not a story of parents who have a hard time accepting that their son is gay - they know it almost before he does, and they are incredible advocates for him as he figures it all out.

Joe is not just a kid discovering his sexuality, he's a kid with learning disabilities and other challenges in school that hamper his ability to feel safe and comfortable, made worse by labeling and poor teachers.

Schwartz does some extensive reporting on how or why those two things might be related, and he does a good job of trying to be dispassionate about the connections. It seems pretty logical to understand why suicide rates might be higher for gay teens, for example.

The other remarkable part of the story, in this day and age, is the way that the Schwartz family advocates for their son. They fight hard to avoid schools putting disorder labels on him (ADHD, Autism, Asperger's), avoid medicating him too much and avoid thinking the school needs to solve everything.

It's a book about balanced parenting as much as it's about raising a gay son.