DR RADICA MAHASE
Throughout May, I have been sharing the experiences of mothers whose children have been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. This week I share the story of Kathy – this is not her real name; she chose to conceal her identity because she fears backlash from society. The photos accompany this article are also not of Kathy. Here’s Kathy’s story:
“I wasn’t supposed to be a mother, and definitely not the mother of a child with special needs. I was only 19 years old when I got pregnant and I didn’t know anything about taking care of a child. I grew up in a home with an abusive father so once I finished form five, I left home. I went to live with a cousin in deep south. At 17, I moved in with an older man from the village. I got pregnant but I had an abortion. Soon after I got pregnant again but by the time I realised I was pregnant; it was too late to have an abortion. I had a baby girl. She was beautiful but I was too depressed at how my life had turned out, to see her beauty. For the first two years of her life, I was mostly angry and depressed and I didn’t really care for her. She used to cry all the time and I would get real mad at her. She didn’t say words and she didn’t really bother with me when I call her name. It’s only later I realised that all this were signs of autism.
"Before her third birthday, I left. I couldn’t take the crying and I didn’t understand why she was not talking. Her father would cuss me up and say that I made her that way and that I needed to fix her and make her better. I didn’t know how to do that so I left and I went up town to live with a friend I knew from school days. I got a job as a security officer. Sometimes I would work in the hospital and I would see all these parents coming with their children. I didn’t really think much about my daughter. When I did, I would say to myself that she was better off with her father, because I wasn’t cut out to be a mother. I was too young; I had my life to live – I made all the excuses for leaving my child.
"One day I saw a little boy who didn’t want to go by the doctor. The parents couldn’t control him – he was scratching them and lashing out. I told the other security guard, watch how bad that child behaving, how his parents can’t even control him. The other guard, an older man, said how he has a son like that and the child just having a meltdown because it’s a new place for him; how his child is autistic and don’t talk. That was the first time in my life I had heard about autism. When my co-worker starting talking about his son, and how he won’t look at you in your eye and he don’t talk, I started to think about my daughter.
[caption id="attachment_1017360" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Understanding your child is an important step to building a strong relationship.- courtesy Alex Singh[/caption]
"After six months of hearing my co-worker speak about his son – how much he loves him and how he takes care of him, he was working all the extra shifts he could get so he could pay for therapy – I called a friend from
