Gabriel is a teenager who is severely autistic: he is completely unsocialized, is incontinent and is unable to speak. In this book his mother, with great honesty, describes what it is like to bring up an autistic child who requires constant care and exhibits challenging behaviour.
Written partly in diary form, Growing Up Severely Autistic covers the minutiae of daily life with vivid immediacy, from preventing Gabriel eating the goldfish, to helping him through his grief on the death of his father. Gabriel's life and relationships with his family are traced from early childhood, through his school days to his entry into residential care at the age of 17. With affection and humour, Kate Rankin has written a personal and intimate study of someone who is very different from those around him, and who cannot himself articulate his experiences.