As Autism Aware­ness Month comes to a close, we hear from Genevieve Wal­cott-Daniel the proud moth­er of Zi­dane Daniel, who was di­ag­nosed with autism. Genevieve tells us her fight to give her son a good life and en­sure he is in­clud­ed and re­spect­ed in so­ci­ety.

Genevieve Wal­cott-Daniel

“It’s her ba­by boy, so let’s paci­fy her wor­ry.” This was the sen­tence that be­gan our jour­ney.

He was in­deed the on­ly boy, but our third child. Af­ter hav­ing two girls, I was told that my ex­pec­ta­tions of his de­vel­op­ment were a bit high. I did not think so.

I was con­cerned that his eyes nev­er met mine when I spoke to him, wor­ried that his speech wasn’t com­ing in clear­ly. We lat­er found out that it was a den­tal is­sue as well that he had to have surgery for.

He did a ba­sic hear­ing test and an­oth­er test with a rec­om­mend­ed au­di­ol­o­gist, so we knew his hear­ing was on point.

I was scared, wor­ried and frus­trat­ed. I start­ed to blame my­self, was it some­thing I did or didn’t do enough dur­ing my preg­nan­cy? Did I have him too old, was my body not able? The ques­tions went on and on.

We were re­ferred to a child psy­chol­o­gist, and with her, he did as much of the very com­pre­hen­sive test­ing as he could with­stand over the span of a few weeks.

The re­sults came back that Zi­dane was on the autism spec­trum; he was four years old. Num­bers were nev­er giv­en, and the words se­vere or mild were nev­er used.

It was rec­om­mend­ed that he re­ceive speech and oc­cu­pa­tion­al ther­a­py to help aid his de­vel­op­ment go­ing for­ward. We got a list­ing from his pae­di­a­tri­cian to start with.

Please note- find­ing a ther­a­pist to fit your child’s needs is so im­por­tant, but find­ing one who cares is even more im­por­tant, and there aren’t many, sad­ly.

Each step so far had been cost­ly, so I was thank­ful that we had and con­tin­ue to have a good sup­port sys­tem. We were not pre­pared, how­ev­er, for the cost of his ther­a­py ses­sions or the fact that our in­sur­ance providers did not cov­er both types of ther­a­py. An­oth­er hard truth was the lack of on­go­ing sup­port from said ther­a­pists when he be­gan to progress steadi­ly.

This was most dis­heart­en­ing, as I placed my trust and be­lief that they would al­so want what was best for him.

While Zi­dane at­tend­ed ther­a­py, he al­so at­tend­ed pre-school. We made sure the school was in­formed of his di­ag­no­sis and kept abreast of his chal­lenges and progress with ther­a­py, even his teach­ers asked for books to help them un­der­stand what autism was and taught his class­mates about him as well. He was nev­er left out of any ac­tiv­i­ty.

We were all learn­ing about Zi­dane to­geth­er.

At this time, I gained fur­ther con­fi­dence to stand firm for him af­ter sev­er­al dis­ap­point­ing and de­flat­ing in­ter­ac­tions with dif­fer­ent per­sons in the med­ical field. Too many times, it’s all about the mon­ey and like most par­ents of spe­cial needs chil­dren, we are forced to make dif­fi­cult choic­es.

We could on­ly af­ford one ses­sion each of speech and oc­cu­pa­tion­al ther­a­py per week, as we had two oth­er school-aged chil­dren and we knew that they al­so need­ed to be prop­er­ly pro­vid­ed for.

I sat in on all his ses­sions, I learnt how to use the meth­ods taught and con­tin­ued us­ing the same meth­ods along with flip books and charts in his dai­ly rou­tine. It made a huge dif­fer­ence for him and his abil­i­ties to func­tion and cope so­cial­ly.

I was even­tu­al­ly told he was not read­ing and we need­ed to at­tend more ses­sions per week, or he would just con­tin­ue to mim­ic pat­terns and words. I was tak­en aback be­cause he was read­ing at home and he read at school.

Imag­ine try­ing to con­vince a trained and cer­ti­fied pro­fes­sion­al of some­thing that you are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing.

I can tell you it did not go down well. This per­son re­fused to ac­knowl­edge Zi­dane’s progress at any stage.

He was ac­cept­ed in­to a spe­cial-needs pri­ma­ry school, as we knew a reg­u­lar school would not be equipped to han­dle his needs.

We de­cid­ed to cease ther­a­py, both for Zi­dane’s well-be­ing and mine.

I con­firmed Zi­dane was read­ing and learn­ing every­thing, in­clud­ing mu­sic; his school has helped to hone these gifts, and we are thank­ful to those teach­ers and his prin­ci­pal who en­cour­age his holis­tic de­vel­op­ment through the chal­lenges.

There is no blue­print to rais­ing or car­ing for a child with autism or an autis­tic child, even the ter­mi­nol­o­gy may vary ac­cord­ing to what you pre­fer to use. How­ev­er, keep try­ing un­til you find what’s best for you and yours. LOV­ING them is the key to every­thing.

He learnt mu­sic by ear at first, us­ing YouTube on his tablet but can now read it af­ter a few class­es, which we could not con­tin­ue again due to pri­or­i­ties, clas­si­cal is his pas­sion, but he will sing and play al­most every­thing that he likes or that he can learn.

He is our su­per boy, our ex­tra­or­di­nary boy. He is an ex­treme­ly loved broth­er, cousin, nephew and grand­son. Oh YES, he is my ba­by boy whom I will ad­vo­cate for AL­WAYS to be treat­ed as any oth­er young man, for as long as I have life.