An Invisible Bubble

The worries of a mother, with an autistic son, who’s, about to start in his early childhood education years, translated…

In the introductions of a friend, we’d taken Strong to a therapist who’d offered long-term support for multiple families with children with autism, in the teacher’s home, we’d, bumped into another family, and spent an energetic afternoon there.

The teacher who was very tentative, used the cloth, and wrapped up the door frame that trips Strong very easily, as she’d listened to us, telling her how he was, progressing, not long thereafter, another family was delivering something for the therapist, and shared with us, how they’d, interacted with their young, and told us why they took the therapist’s advice, to get away from the early intervention systems available and out of the systems of education, with a primary caretaker of the child coming from the family, and shouldered up the twenty-four seven company and care for the child, finding the resources, homeschool, writing the diaries, and to adjust how they’d, interacted with their young at all times, and suggested that if our family situations allowed us to, we can, take after their example too.

I was very grateful, as I’d, offered my gratitude to the family, and admitted to them, that right now, I am, still in shock, and had, fallen, deep into a depressive state, that I feel so much stress and pressures, and am not yet ready, for the one-on-one care for my son, plus, the therapists Strong was looked after by since he was born all suggested that we put him in the kindergartens, to increase his interactions with the outside world, to see if it can, start up his desires to model after other children’s behaviors, to help him develop his cognition and language better; and we’d found, as we took Strong to the park or to the bookstores as we set up the parent-children activities, we’d observed, that he’d stopped screaming that he was getting closer to the crowd, compared to back when he was two, there was once when he saw other children chasing in the parks, he’d gotten so happy, and started, smiling, and run in the opposite directions of where the rest of the children were, playing too.  This had made us decide, to enroll Strong into the public elementary school’s kindergarten’s special education class in July, hoped, that in the instruction of the special eds teacher, with the ration of one to three, he can, develop the communication skills, interactions styles, away from me and Daddy strong, with the children of a mixed age group.

On the one hand, I was, looking forward to the start of school for Strong, hoped that he could, adapt well in the special educations class, and we’re, able to, eventually, transfer him back onto the regular classes, at the same time, we’d worried that he might get picked on by other children in the regular education systems, or get overlooked by the system.  We can only imagine, that the teachers that Strong will have, are like the FB “Unsweet, Unspicy” ascribed in the illustrated book “I didn’t Mean it”, guiding the rest of the class to accept the child with autism explaining how the children with autism were, wrapped up in an invisible bubble, that was why they’d only cared about themselves, and not anything else outside, that they’d not done the things that angered everybody else on purpose, and guided the rest of the students to empathize, and to, accept the student with autism.

I can’t help but pray, that if Strong couldn’t adapt to learning in school, I can somehow, find the courage to, teach him myself, one on one.

There are, naturally, tons of worries, for parents with special needs children as the children start their school years, and many considerations of whether or not we should place our special needs child into special ed program, or should we, send him to school with the ordinary children, and force him to adapt, but there are many good resources for parents to get online, that they can, take from other parents’ who’d been through similar situations.