DR RADICA MAHASE

Kevin Brazant, lecturer and consultant on male/fatherhood issues, says, “It is a widespread assumption that when a relationship breaks down, it’s a man’s instinct to run off and abandon his duties. But that’s not the case.”

In TT we often hear cases of the deadbeat dads – the fathers who neglect their responsibilities as parents.

However, at the same time, we have fathers who are fully responsible for their children and who do an excellent job. Here’s the story of one such father, Marcus and his experiences of raising a child on the autism spectrum.

“I was always one of those ‘sweet man.’ From since I was in secondary school there were always girls around. I was a footballer. I got by on my looks.

"When I finished university and started working, for years my life was one big party – every weekend was a lime and for Carnival I would hit all the fetes. That was my life until my son was born.

"When Jared came into our lives, we were both in our 30s and married for eight years.

"By the time he was 18 months old we started seeing signs of developmental delays. As a baby, he never rolled on his side or tried to sit up or babble. Our paediatrician assured us that he would start to develop soon, that every child develops at a different pace.

"By age three we were worried and we took him to a couple other doctors. He was eventually diagnosed one month before his fourth birthday.

"My wife became depressed. At first, she blamed herself, then she blamed me – in her words, 'If you didn’t take so long to get him diagnosed, he would have been better by now.'

"By the time Jared was five years old, she said she couldn’t ‘handle a child like him.’ She would become very frustrated and angry when he had meltdowns. She told me that she was not going to waste her life taking care of a child who would never get better, and she left.

[caption id="attachment_951271" align="alignnone" width="678"] There are fathers who are fully responsible for their children and who do an excellent job. -[/caption]

"It's been five years since I have been a single parent. Jared is now almost 11 years old.

"It has been a very difficult road, with many challenges. I would be honest; I didn’t always handle them well. In the two years after she left, I left my job and lived off my savings. Those two years were spent running down schools; finding therapists; figuring out his diet –basically, two years of trying to get help for my son. I couldn’t have done that if I was working a full-time job and I didn’t have anyone else to do it for me.

"In those two years my divorce was finalised and I got full custody of my son – that was easy, because his mother made it clear to the court that she did not want him.

"At one point I started making furniture for sale – my customers were people in the area or from church, who bought to support me. Every so often, the pastor from the church nearby would bring us hampers. Sometimes neighbours would b