An Autism story with a happy ending

Dear Reader

My son has given me permission to share his story so far.

He was a blond haired cuddly baby. All seemed well apart from we noticed that he missed out crawling completely. Around 3 we started to get some strange behaviours which frightened us. He was refusing to cooperate at nursery school - all he would do was black scribbles in drawing whereas at home he drew us pictures of cars, spiders, etc. He was very tired all the time, and at 4 years old, having found infant school very distressing, he told me, after I'd finished reading his bedtime story that he "didn't want to be on this earth any more".

I felt I was a worrying mum so didn't bother the school - but they came and bothered me after his first week there. They said that one to one they could teach him anything they wanted but in the class he was all over the place. They recommended we took him to the local family centre.

We were devastated - He was my first child and I lacked confidence - now I thought our parenting skills were going to be put under scrutiny and found wanting.

After a short time of assessment of us and him separately, they came straight out with it - he is on the Autistic Spectrum.

For us it was a revelation - we read up on it - now we and the professionals and school could understand why he found things difficult and could work out what to do to help him.

My family were split down the middle by the "label" they felt we had given him. For us the label was  the key to helping him, to others it was the end of the world.

He was given 25 hours a week of support at School - one to one working with him either alone or with another child on things like turntaking  in conversation, eye contact, playing board games. They kept him on task.

There was school move when he was becoming distressed at school again and we found out they were using his supporters for other children. At the next school they used his supporters for his most stressful times - play times.

He would come out of playtime in a terrible state - so and so had done x,y,z to him. The supporters observed all the interactions he made. They would explain that it was not so black and white - he had done A so  the other child had done B, which caused C and D and so on. It was a light bulb moment for him. After this and a week of specialist therapy all of a sudden instead of going into school first thing in the morning head down, not interacting with anyone - his head was up and he was smiling. He was on his way and the smile started to make him friends.

It was  gradual process from then on - but it was always up.

I remember one time he was in the 1st year at senior school. I got called in to see his teacher. Apparently in maths he was walking around behaving like a chicken  - yes exactly that - I don't know what prompted me but I immediately asked "what set is he in" - they said he is in the bottom of 7 sets for maths as his written work is so bad.  No wonder he is behaving like that I said, he is bored out of his mind - his(written work may be like that but in some abilities he is the top one percent of the population. His dad and his mum have 4 science degrees between them - his Dad two from Cambridge University which stacks the odds in his favour).  - put him up in a higher set, I said, and the chicken imitations will stop.  They did - and they stopped!

He never liked studying at secondary school, knowing him as I do now, nothing interested him and if he isn't interested, he can't make himself focus. He didn't read for pleasure either - even Harry Potter and the philospher's stone he loved when read to him at class , he didn't read the book.

I remember a light bulb moment for me - like it was yesterday. We were walking along past a well known book shop. He used to love watching astronomy series on TV with me and suddenly I said, they will have books on astronomy in that shop. He said to me " If I see something I like will you buy it for me" "Certainly". Half an hour later he came out with a pile of books including Stephen Hawking - he was about 13 at the time I think. He had just realised that there was books on the subjects he really wanted to learn about. From that day on he has always been on his own programme of learning on things that he loves. Whether in books or on the internet. These have included philosophy, economics, astronomy, history, languages (including Chinese and Korean). I couldn't have imagined this when he was at infants school and his entire year's work would only fill 2 pages.


Now he is taking a degree to qualify him in speech and language therapy. He has never really been interested in the fact that he is on the autistic spectrum and has not wanted his lecturers, etc to know about it. But learning about Autism as part of his course he has started to want to find out more about his condition - he has put himself through tests at Uni for Dyspraxia, Autism, ADD, ADHD and Dyslexia - he's waiting on the results but it looks like Autism and ADD are his main difficulties. Last week he went on a placement and worked with an Autistic adult. That night he couldn't sleep, he was reading everything he could on Autism and was so excited about finding out about how he fits in all of this. At the moment he feels this could be his calling in his professional life.

I love my son very much - he is a good looking, moral, deep thinking and also charming person. He needs a lot of "social down time" but has a good number of genuine friends. He has a wonderful smile. I am very proud of him.

Its has been such a journey all these years. I wish I could go back and tell myself in the past how it will all turn out - I used to be so worried! I am no longer.

Thanks for reading

Caroline
xxx














Keywords: Autism, ASD, Asperger's, Spectrum, Children, Parent, Mother, ADD, parenting, school, statement, University, Test