NEXT STOP

NEXT STOP is a candid portrait of a differently-abled young man poised at the entry to adulthood. Weaving bittersweet and humorous anecdotes from David's life as the youngest of three testosterone-soaked brothers, NEXT STOP recounts the complex relationship between an autistic adult child and his family as he steps out into the real world alone for the first time.

The summer David Finland was twenty-one years old, he and his mother, Glen, navigated their way through the Washington, D.C., metro trains. Every day. The goal was that if David could learn the train lines, maybe David could get a job. And if he could get a job, then maybe he could move out on his own. And maybe his parent's marriage could get the jumpstart it craved. Maybe.
The saying in the autistic community is that "if you've met one autistic child, you've met one autistic child." Every child is different. Yet NEXT STOP manages to paint a portrait that is universal about how autism affected not just her youngest son, but Glen's entire family. Parents of special needs adult children will relate to the utter fatigue of raising the differently abled child and the world of expensive therapies and persistent evaluations which inevitably lead them to prickly finger-pointing between the sheets. NEXT STOP shows how David's autism not only affected David, but everyone in the family. NEXT STOP also addresses an issue that has received scant attention a generation of differently-abled children is being raised, and what happens to them once they age out of the government-sponsored programs? Rendered without sentimentality, the story is grounded in the personal narrative of a mother's perpetually tested hope. Hardwired to protect him, letting go turns out to be harder for her than for her son. And in this way, Glen's story is not one specific to having a son with autism, it is a universal story of how our children grow up and how we learn to let go and reclaim our own lives, no matter how hard.