One morning, Tophs, Taylor Harris’ round-cheeked, lively 22-month-old, wakes up listless, only lifting his head to gulp down water. This Boy We Made is a stirring and radiantly written examination of the bond between mother and child, full of hard-won insights about fighting for and finding meaning when nothing goes as expected.A Black mother bumps up against the limits of everything she thought she believed - about science and medicine, about motherhood, and about her faith - in search of the truth about her son. What if her son’s challenges have saved her life?
A long-awaited appointment with a geneticist ultimately reveals nothing about what’s causing Tophs’s drops in blood sugar, his processing delays-but it does reveal something unexpected about Taylor’s own health. Some days, her sweet, charismatic boy seems just fine others, he struggles to answer simple questions. She spends countless hours trying to navigate health and education systems that can be hostile to Black mothers and children at night she googles, prays, and interrogates her every action. With every question the doctors answer about Tophs’s increasingly troubling symptoms, more arise, and Taylor dives into the search for a diagnosis.
But at the hospital, her maternal instincts are confirmed: something is wrong with her boy, and Taylor’s life will never be the same.
She rushes Tophs to the doctor, ignoring the part of herself, trained by years of therapy for generalized anxiety disorder, that tries to whisper that she’s overreacting. One morning, Tophs, Taylor Harris’s round-cheeked, lively twenty-two-month-old, wakes up listless, only lifting his head to gulp down water. A Black mother bumps up against the limits of everything she thought she believed-about science and medicine, about motherhood, and about her faith-in search of the truth about her son.
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