As we con­tin­ue to ob­serve Autism Aware­ness, we hear from those clos­est to autists—their loved ones.

This week, Anaya In­dar Per­sad tells us what is has been like grow­ing up with an autis­tic sib­ling and what she wants the world to know about her broth­er's life with the neu­rode­vel­op­men­tal con­di­tion.

Anaya In­dar Per­sad

Grow­ing up with an autis­tic sib­ling has been no easy road to walk. As the sis­ter to an old­er autis­tic broth­er, I learned from a very young age that our re­la­tion­ship was a unique­ly dy­nam­ic one. Where oth­er younger sib­lings ex­pe­ri­enced a sense of pro­tec­tion, com­fort through re­ly­ing on the knowl­edge and ex­pe­ri­ence of their old­er sib­ling, and a spe­cial bond formed through grow­ing up and ex­pe­ri­enc­ing life to­geth­er, my re­la­tion­ship with Aidan de­vi­at­ed from this norm. From an ear­ly age, I be­came my broth­er’s voice, stand­ing up for him in pri­ma­ry school and en­sur­ing that no one took ad­van­tage of him. I al­ways checked in on him, mak­ing sure that he was feel­ing com­fort­able, with his well-be­ing al­ways on my mind. I grew to un­der­stand that I was my broth­er’s pro­tec­tor dur­ing the times that he could not de­fend him­self, though he has come a long way from where he used to be. Al­though part of me wish­es that he could have been the “typ­i­cal” old­er broth­er for me, a larg­er part of me echoes the fact that he did not ask for autism, yet his war­rior-like spir­it al­lows him to push through each day, de­spite its chal­lenges, and be as present as he can as a broth­er, a son and as a friend. 

I have al­ways had, and will con­tin­ue to have, a strong sense of ad­mi­ra­tion for my broth­er. Amid op­pos­ing thoughts from friends and fam­i­ly, Aidan has over­come and ac­com­plished ma­jor feats in his life. He has math­e­mat­i­cal prowess and was a fi­nal­ist in the 2018 Men­tal Math Com­pe­ti­tion at his pri­ma­ry school. He even ex­plained seem­ing­ly dif­fi­cult top­ics to me, which con­tributed to my even­tu­al love for math­e­mat­ics al­so. He ex­ceed­ed ex­pec­ta­tions by suc­cess­ful­ly writ­ing the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) and passed for his first-choice sec­ondary school. Fur­ther, amid so­cial is­sues, my broth­er reg­is­tered and wrote four CSEC ex­am­i­na­tions, of which he ob­tained pass­es in Math­e­mat­ics, In­for­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy and Span­ish. 

He has a fas­ci­na­tion for unique so­cial con­structs such as time and date, sun­ris­es and sun­sets, and glob­al ge­og­ra­phy, which all show­case his pro­found abil­i­ty to re­call de­tailed in­for­ma­tion on past time­lines and as­so­ci­at­ed de­tails, such as re­lat­ed weath­er for spe­cif­ic events. Add this to the fact that he is able to mem­o­rise ve­hi­cle li­cence plate num­bers to the own­er’s lo­ca­tion, and you now have a game of match­ing dri­vers to their lo­ca­tions while on an evening dri­ve. He is al­so mu­si­cal­ly gift­ed. While he is able to mem­o­rise mu­sic and play ad­vanced man­u­scripts of songs on the key­board with­out look­ing at the keys, he some­times be­comes ‘re­sis­tant’ to re­peat these feats. He has al­so put his tech­no­log­i­cal and artis­tic skills to use through at­tend­ing class­es for graph­ic de­sign, where he has a new­found en­joy­ment and pas­sion for this field. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Aidan is very spir­i­tu­al­ly ground­ed, as he makes a con­tin­u­ous ef­fort to read his Bible dai­ly and en­gage in wor­ship of­ten. He en­sures that, re­gard­less of week­ly cir­cum­stances, he nev­er miss­es a Sun­day ser­vice, and his ded­i­ca­tion to his church life and re­la­tion­ship with God is one that I tru­ly re­spect. 

How­ev­er, this does not over­look the chal­lenges he faces on a dai­ly ba­sis. It has been a con­stant up­hill bat­tle with his cog­ni­tion, where at times, seem­ing­ly sim­ple in­struc­tions that are as­signed to him have to be re­peat­ed mul­ti­ple times, with al­most full guid­ance for the task to be com­plet­ed. These is­sues be­came more frus­trat­ing for Aidan as he got old­er. He wished for more in­de­pen­dence to per­form tasks, but strug­gles to do them, which has led to more fre­quent out­bursts and aban­don­ment of the chore at hand. Fur­ther, Aidan prefers soli­tude over in­ter­ac­tion, mak­ing it more dif­fi­cult for our fam­i­ly to spend qual­i­ty time to­geth­er. Of­ten­times, he eats meals away from us and con­fines him­self to his room or bath­room when­ev­er oth­ers are around. Be­cause of this, build­ing a close re­la­tion­ship has not been sim­ple, and we of­ten make com­pro­mis­es be­tween his soli­tude and spend­ing time with us, but we have come to re­spect his wants while try­ing to see life through his eyes dai­ly, as he bat­tles his autism. 

One chal­lenge that Aidan has con­tin­u­al­ly faced is the abil­i­ty to make friends. As his sis­ter, I be­came his best friend, where we would cre­ate home movies out of dai­ly rou­tines, watch shows and talk to­geth­er. How­ev­er, so­cial in­ter­ac­tions with oth­er peo­ple his age have been, and con­tin­ue to be, a strug­gle. Many are ig­no­rant of his autism, and as such, he of­ten gets left out of con­ver­sa­tions, over­looked or ig­nored when he speaks, and does not get in­vit­ed to so­cial events. 

Al­though autism pos­es a so­cial chal­lenge for Aidan, the greater chal­lenge for him, and count­less oth­ers, lies with­in our so­ci­ety, over­com­ing ig­no­rance to­wards autism, and learn­ing to ac­cept autis­tic in­di­vid­u­als as valid mem­bers of our com­mu­ni­ties. It is my wish to see my broth­er re­ceive in­vi­ta­tions for gath­er­ings, gen­uine­ly en­joy him­self and build last­ing con­nec­tions with oth­ers. 

My broth­er has ac­com­plished a lot from where he used to be, when he could not speak, could not use the bath­room, could not go out in pub­lic at times, and could not sleep. Al­though his jour­ney was nev­er lin­ear and is far from fin­ished, his progress de­spite set­backs has al­ways been a mo­ti­va­tion for him to press for­ward and ac­com­plish feats that seemed un­think­able for him. He con­tin­ues to put his best foot for­ward in the work that he does, find­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for gain­ful em­ploy­ment and en­hanced skills. His life in­spires my fam­i­ly and me, and his mile­stones are cel­e­brat­ed be­cause they re­veal his true heart and na­ture; one of pu­ri­ty, in­no­cence, de­ter­mi­na­tion and a deep and pro­found love for God.