DR RADICA MAHASE
As we, being in the month of May, get ready to celebrate mothers, I am sharing an article written by one very proud mother of an autism boy, in her own words.
"My name is Sharlene Persad-Sankar and I am the proud mother of my superstar, Simran. I come from a very small, close-knit family. My son’s name is Simran Enrique Sankar. He is seven years old and he is my only child. Finding out I was pregnant was a miracle come true. I had difficulty getting pregnant for more than ten years and had almost given up hope of becoming a mother. My pregnancy was filled with love and support from my family and all we wanted was a healthy happy child.
When Simran was born, I decided to give up a job that I loved and had been doing since I was 17 years old, to become a stay-at-home mother and wife. At the time, we knew that it would be a huge financial and mental sacrifice but thought it would be temporary and I could start back working when he started school. However, I realise the universe had other plans for me and our superstar.
In the first two years, Simran grew physically, but slowly we started to notice words like mama and dada were not coming. He would understand what he was being told. He was always energetic, never sitting still, and would not make eye contact. My sister, a nurse, advised me to take him to a developmental paediatrician. It took eight months to get an appointment – eight months of not knowing what was going on with my baby and if anything could be done.
We saw the paediatrician and our world changed! I was told that he has autism spectrum disorder that was incurable, and there was no way of telling how badly it would affect him. All we knew is that the hope and dreams we had for our baby were gone. At first it was very hard for me and my family. I started to question myself and ask what I did wrong and worry about his future and what would happen because we knew little about ASD and did not know where to turn to get help.
Once we looked at him, we knew we needed to try. We put our faith in God and started to Google and read everything we could on ASD and what could be done to help. The more we learnt, the stronger we became, and the more we started to focus on Simran and to find ways to help him. We had to learn his strength and weakness and build on both. We had to learn new ways of teaching him and doing things at his pace. Simran is such a brilliant, amazing, kind, gentle, loving child and anyone who knows him would tell me he is always smiling. He is a water baby who loves to go to the beach; he loves learning new things on the tablet and phone. At first there were a lot of shattered screens and devices, usually when he had meltdowns. He even went through a phase of washing them but thankfully he’s over that now.
[caption id="attachment_1013727" align="alignnone" width="900"] Sharlene says, "I consider myself one of the chosen mothers." - Courtesy Alex Singh[/caption]
I wanted him to have as normal a life as possible. I enrolled him in preschool as I wanted him to so
