Recently I was at my grandparents place(southern part of Tamilnadu) as Ramanathan was having his summer vacation. My relatives were insisting to take Ramanathan to nearby Speech therapist. As usual I wanted to try that out for my son. To my surprise I could see so many kids with various special needs who came in there. That was the first session for Ramanathan and since its new place and new therapist, but the therapist avoided that and took him in to a small room. I was waiting outside the room hearing all loud cry’s from Ramukutta.

After an hour when I entered into the room as the class got over, I was shell shocked to see my son sitting in one end of corner gazing at the wall and was not showing any kind of reaction towards me. The therapist was appreciating that act and was telling me “See your son has got settled down in this place”. After having a discussion with her I was able to understand she had a very little bit knowledge about autism. But there were queue of people who believe her and have their kids dumped within a single room. I really appreciate if she could develop her skills and do a real service to those kids.

But rather than the therapist, I was not able to bear the fact that there were so many parents who weren’t able to understand their child’s problem and still in a illusion that only the child has the disability to speak .Also there were number of kids whose mother have taken a house nearby the therapist place just for the sake of availing the treatment the therapist gives, leaving behind the home and their spouse in their native places.

Also, recently I was able to see a newspaper carrying an article on autism and was stating that bad parenting was one of the reasons for it. This clearly shows that most part of our community do not have complete picture of this autism which can be treated by early intervention.

Yes! I was also in the similar situation some years back when my son was diagnosed with autism. I feel as a mother it’s really tough to face the fact and accept it .Mostly I wanted to avoid people saying that my son has behavioral problems. But that didn’t buy my son anything.But by the time I understood his situation and react he was already 4 yrs old.Though its late I always feel that if at all I started all these therapies at the age of 2 when I first identified , surely it would have brought better more changes in Ramanathans life.I feel Its high time that we need to speak out about what “AUTISM “means by.

   To all parents their kids are very special to them. For me too………Ramanathan is always special to me. As a mother I had lot of expectations from my son who was cute little chubby boy ………The more I try to mingle with him the more he went away from me …….He never ever let a smile at me for the past few (say 3 to 4) years. And after a long wait of 5 yrs he slowly has started showing his love and affection towards me…….

              I had a tough time in understanding his world of his own……… to enter into it and now I am in the way of bringing him out of his world to our world………

Now I am also one among the lucky mother of a kid who is termed as “Amma Payyan “(might be soooo silly but I love that). I pray god who was with me during my tough times and thank god for giving me such a wonderful son whom I can groom.