At two years of age my son (hence forward known as Bubba) was diagnosed with Autism. At the time I didn’t know whether I was going to be an accepting parent or a parent who lives in denial. Truth is, I am both and somewhere in the middle and neither.
Bubba had a speech delay. People say boys speak later. Don’t worry about it. He’ll speak in his own time. But I took him to a paediatrician who made the diagnosis and sent him to therapy. I had no problem with getting him into speech therapy. I did have a problem with him being diagnosed as autistic. I was afraid of him being labelled and treated differently. I also thought that the paediatrician’s diagnosis was based on unreliable techniques.
Asking a child who has a speech delay to name something is ridiculous. Asking a child to warm to a complete stranger and feel comfortable enough to follow instruction by that stranger in a matter of minutes is ridiculous.
I decided to accept the diagnosis for the time being. It meant Bubba got the help he needed for his speech delay and I got additional help from his preschool and school. I also decided to do some research of my own. There is such a large amount of contradictory reference material it makes it nearly impossible for a layperson to understand what the diagnosis really means.
As I read through the materials, the list of characteristics astounded me. I had exhibitted or did exhibit a lot of them myself. Did this mean that I was an undiagnosed Austism sufferer? Had I genetically passed on this to my son? Was it my fault? Did Bubba have to exhibit all the characteristics or only some of them? Did he have to exhibit them all the time or could they be dependent on the situation? There were a lot of questions and not many answers. While one theory of treatment would espouse one way of doing things, another would tell you another. Finding the answer would not be found in any book or on any website. It would only be found through trial and error, and finding what worked for Bubba.
At preschool his teachers were very good. They helped us to apply for funding for an aide for Bubba and worked with the speech therapist in helping him extend his vocabulary and his speech generally. He improved in leaps and bounds. Despite a few months of umming and ahhing Bubba was deemed ready to start school with his peers. It was a bit of a relief, really. I think he would have driven me nuts if he’d been at home another year.
Bubba is now 6 years old. He’s just finished his first year at school. He won the speech competition for his grade. He was elected to the SRC as well. If I hadn’t gotten him the help he needed he’d never have achieved those things. And while he stills exhibits a few Autistic tendancies (obsessiveness mainly – but really what child isn’t obsessive about something?) he seems to be the child all the other parents want.
He’s good with children of all ages. He doesn’t discriminate against people with disabilities (he has a child with Downs in his class and they are good mates). He’s a keen student – loves numbers to the point where he’s working at least a year above where he should be, watches documentaries just as intently as cartoons, and loves books – and polite to adults.
Of course, he also has his moments when I could happily throttle him. Now that he’s found his voice, I often wish he had an off button. If he’s not talking to me, or to his grandmother, or his toys, he’s just happily talking to himself, or singing to himself. Sometimes the incessant talking is more than I can handle and I’m glad to pack him off to school or escape to work to get away from it. And having a voice means he can also say NO and I DON’T WANT TO and all those other things which drive parents up the wall.
To all intents and purposes, Bubba is a normal and well-adjusted child. As scary as being diagnosed with Autism initially was, living with it is only as scary as you make it for yourself. Bubba doesn’t think he’s any different from the other children. He knows that some people have more trouble with things than other people (something some adults never learn) and he’s just lucky to be quite good at some things.
The same goes for myself. Living with a child with Autism is only as scary as you make it. My attitude would probably be different if Bubba was more severely affected by his Autism. Having worked is the disability industry with many Autistism Spectrum Disorders I can see that Bubba is fairly mild. Even so, I had the choice to accept or deny.
The answer is, of course, that in day to day life there is a measure of both. I accept that his has Autism to some degree and deny that it needs to affect him as he grows. I accept that there will need to be modifications to some activities when he comes up against something that his Autistic characteristics make harder but deny that I should treat him any differently than any other child. He still needs love and discipline, the same as every other child.
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