Shonda Schilling's Emotional Roller Coaster of Parenting

FRAMINGHAM  – In 2007, while the Boston Red Sox were heading for another World Series, Shonda Schilling said she felt like she was at her lowest point and baseball was "her drug."

Struggling as a parent, she eventually learned her son Grant, then 7, had a form of autism, diagnosed as Asperger’s Syndrome.

Asperger's syndrome is a developmental disorder that is on the autism spectrum. Children with Asperger’s have socialization issues, can be highly intelligent and may have emotionally inappropriate behavior. Boys are more likely to have the syndrome than girls. It is estimated than two out of every 10,000 children have the syndrome.

Schilling told an audience assembled at Framingham State University the diagnosis put everything into perspective. She understood why her son was who he is, but it caused her to doubt her role as a mother.

Schilling spoke passionately and candidly about her experience of being a mother of a child with a special need and raising a family in the lime light.

During the middle of her Q&A session Tuesday night, she became ill and was taken by ambulance to MetroWest Medical Center. A scheduled book signing after the talk did not take place.

Schilling in her own words - 9 quotes:

• “I was a baseball wife … Red Sox Nation doesn’t care if I have a nervous breakdown, they just want Curt to win”
• “I know what it feels like to have a child who is not invited to birthday parties or a child who is not included in after-school activities.”
• “He really doesn’t fit in. But, he’s happy.”
• “We don’t reward or praise our kids enough. That is what Grant feeds off of is the praise.”
• “I have no perfect kids. I got zero out of four perfect kids.”
• “A mother is all I ever wanted to be. And, I was feeling like a failure as a mother.”
• “He can’t follow what other kids do. He can’t understand what other kids think.”
• “It was harder on me than it was on him (her son).”
• ‘Even though he was not the youngest, Grant was the one I always had to keep an eye on.”

Schilling’s book , The Best Kind of Differentwas on the New York Times bestsellers list. She said she wrote it in about eight weeks. She finished on Dec. 23. “I also found out that I can never let my husband be in charge of Christmas again.”

To learn more about Schilling and her causes visit thebestkindofdifferent.com.