love that boy -- a book review

Ron Fournier's Love That Boy:  What Two Presidents, Eight Road Trips, and My Son Taught Me about a Parent's Expectations is a memoir written for every father to read.  In it, Fournier recounts the story of learning to connect with his youngest child, Tyler.  That connection, though, wasn't easy:  Tyler hated sports, which his dad loved, and he was socially awkward, which made Fournier cringe.  That's because Tyler was diagnosed -- at the rather late age of 12 -- with Asperger's Syndrome.

One thread of the memoir follows father and son on a series of post-diagnosis road trips.  Tyler loves history and Fournier is a former White House correspondent, so they visit presidential house-museums -- the White House; Teddy Roosevelt's Sagamore Hill; the Adams home in Quincy; Jefferson's Monticello.  Fournier tries to connect the dots for Tyler:  Roosevelt suffered asthma and was bullied as a child but grew up to be wildly popular, he tells him.  "You're trying too hard", Tyler says.

Divided into two parts, "What We Want" and "What We Need", the memoir is also a familiar meditation on parenting -- our outsize expectations for our kids' success, popularity and happiness.  Fournier interviews a number of parents of children with Asperger's and depression, in a way that shows not only his tender affection for his own son, but for children everywhere.

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I received a free copy of this book as part of the Blogging for Books program in exchange for my honest review here.