We had to break the news.
“Calder is autistic.”
We announced this after every one had eaten during the
birthday celebration of my mom and Calder, whose birth dates are two days
apart.
My mom’s expression was one of puzzlement. Autistic?
“It means he may never attend normal school.”
Her countenance fell.
My son Calder was three years old when we decided not
to wait any longer for him to start talking. Following the doctor’s advice, we
had him assessed formally at KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital. The test took
more than two hours and comprised observation and parents’ answers to
questionnaires.
Unfortunately, Calder did not cooperate with the
psychologist. Instead of following her instructions, he was more interested in
playing with the window blinds. Then he did something he had never done before:
he lay on the floor and spun himself like a fan. The verdict: moderate autism.
So autism is the reason why he didn’t respond when we
called his name. Autism is the reason why he appeared deaf to our words. And
later, autism would explain why everything must take place in a certain order, and
why he flaps his hands like a chicken when excited, why he makes sounds like
long yawns when he is enjoying bus rides. Autism makes him weird but nothing
beats the idea that he would never be able to attend mainstream schools.
If you are a parent, your goal for your child would
probably be to see him or her through PSLE, O’levels, A’levels. Of course, it
would be great if your child can make it to university. And when your child has
graduated, you hope he or she would get a good job and marry a good spouse.
When I found out that Calder is autistic, I got lost because the normal route
had somehow vanished.
Of course, there are parents who put their autistic
child in mainstream schools. The child may struggle socially and academically
but what’s most important to them is that this child spends time among normal
children and learns to behave like one. Other parents hesitate to put their
autistic child in mainstream schools because they fear the child would be
singled out for his or her oddity and be mercilessly bullied.
I belong to the latter group of parents. Especially so
since Calder’s language, even now at six years old, does not extend beyond the
basic like “give me apple”, “go to sleep”, “take train”. I am worried because
he would never be able to tell me if he’s bullied. Besides, for a child who
does not know how to gargle despite two years of teaching, he is not going to
be able to cope with weekly spelling tests. I know of parents who use the cane
to make their child learn spelling well. Imagine being that child!
Still, it is hard to give up the dream of a promising
future for Calder. And in Singapore,
“good future” is equated with educational qualifications. So I turned my
attention to Pathlight School, the only autism school in Singapore that
trains its students for certifications like PSLE and the O’levels. Since it specializes
in autism, I can trust it to protect my child from bullies and other discomfort
that a neurotypical person may not be aware of. It seems to be the best of both
worlds. Unfortunately, it is so popular that you need to achieve an IQ of some
75 to 80 to qualify.
It became my mission to train Calder to be “smart”
enough to enter Pathlight
School. I engaged tutors
and therapists to help him, I made him many laminated books so he could
memorise his address, memorise the definition of occupations, recognize the
function of various tools etc. Every evening, my husband and I took turns to
teach Calder for one hour, hoping he could absorb all the knowledge in time for
his second psychological test. This is the TEST which would determine whether
or not he would be pursuing educational certificates like other children.
Shortly before his sixth birthday, Calder took this
test. I had prayed that he would be a good boy and cooperate with the
psychologist. He was a good boy and did his best. But his best was not enough.
He could not understand what was required of him. The psychologist wanted him
to arrange blocks according to a given picture but he kept putting the blocks
directly onto the picture. And when he managed to get the formation right, the
psychologist wouldn’t stop the timing (yes, timing was recorded) until he had
aligned his blocks parallel to the picture.
He could name colours and shapes but he could not
answer the question, “How many legs does a bird have?” At this point, so early
into the test, the psychologist said she would not give him an IQ score because
of his extreme marks (near full marks versus near zero marks). But there were
so many things we had taught him that had not been tested! Like counting.
Counting is a learned concept and not a part of IQ, said the psychologist. But later
she tested him on alphabet! She asked him, “What is your full name?” He gave
the right answer, but then she said: it sounded scripted (of course, how else
does he learn?!).
He is not going to be able to cope in Pathlight, she
said. No, do not write him off yet, I beseeched, please carry on with the test
and see how well he can score. It will get harder, she warned, and it did. The
tasks she subsequently gave were impossible ones – bird is to worm as squirrel
is to acorn, for example. Or rain is to umbrella as sun is to sunglasses. How is
my Calder supposed to know such things? He is barely interested in them! The
test became a nightmare not to show how much he knew but how much he didn’t
know, like a set-up to convince me my son couldn’t make it. My husband and I shook
our heads at each other. Nonetheless, I was very proud of Calder for staying
seated and tackling these ridiculous questions with a smile.
At the end of the session, I was ready to raise both
hands - I SURRENDER! I surrender my hopes of him entering Pathlight! I
surrender my dreams of him qualifying educationally like other children! I
surrender the certain future of a good job and a good spouse for my boy!
I seem to have failed in my goals for Calder but now
that I have failed, the goals get replaced by perhaps more worthy goals – that
he grows up happily, for instance. That he learns at his own pace.
The next morning, when I greeted Calder “Good Morning”,
what I saw was no longer a boy who could never catch up. I saw a free spirit, free
to learn happily, free from the rat race. So I was sad but at the same time
relieved.
Perhaps, at the end of the day, Calder is going to be
the one to have lived a truly fulfilled life after all.
***
The above article was written in 2010 and published in
Today’s Parents. Author Brenda Tan wrote a book entitled “Come into my world: 31 stories of Autism in Singapore”. This book is sold
in autism schools and a few cafes. To find out more, visit
www.come-into-my-world.com.
