Breaking news

I just had a lunch date with my sister and her little boy. They are in the preparation of sending their soon-to-be eightheenth month old to school. It's an exciting journey for both parents and child. It made me start thinking about preshcool for the unborn baby, already. I know its way to early to be thinking about such things. But having been in the childcare senario almost all my working life, I do recall when my boys were send off. This story is more for my boy with special needs. It goes something like this...

The phone rings, and you take a deep breathe... could it be another call for your child? Are you afraid of such calls when teachers call you to inform you about the outburst in school, or the meltdown of your child.

These are normally the beginning stages for some parents, before they are thrust into the tornado called autism. But I must say, I don't remember ever getting such a call for Ivan.

When Ivan was eighteen months old, I enrolled him into a Childcare.(just like his elder brother) I worked for the same management, but was in another branch. I would check with my colleagues about Ivan's progress. They didn't say much as they thought he was going through his anxiety phase.

But the updates that I got from the teachers, they were not much to work on. The teachers mentioned that he didn't like transitions. When the class left for the playground, Ivan would cry to leave the class. Then when they finally got him there, returning back to class was another fiasco. These reports however, could also be similar to a child who is getting used to the new routines in the school, something in the range of separation anxiety.

After a month, when most of the children had settled, Ivan was still fussy and anxious. He would cry then drink milk and fall asleep. My boss was doing her Degree at that time and noticed something peculiar about Ivan's behaviour. She realized that there were some traits if autism in Ivan.

She called me up, and asked me up come down after work. I did and I must admit I was thrown off by what she said.

She very cautiously, addressed the behaviour issues she noticed and then introduced the word, autism. By then my head was spinning. What? Who? How? Huh?

But being an educator myself, also because this information was coming from someone I respected, I remained calm. My husband on the other hand didn't take the news too well.

We were on two ends of the equation. We were lost and confused. We were both in no shape to help our little boy. We went through lots of disagreements and decided to wait on the matter eventually.


Somewhere around a year later, I told Peter, that something had to be done. We could not just sit around waiting, thinking that our boys was simply a late bloomer. I handed him the autism checklist and told him to check it by himself. Should he find many similarities, then he was to move in my direction. 


He did the checklist and there was no denying. There was something amiss. It was time me got some form of help. And so the journey began.