WHEN he was born, he was a self-sufficient kid.
He was happy to entertain himself, he developed quite quickly, all the other milestones were great except that he didn’t talk. He didn’t respond to his name.
“He was in his own world doing his own thing,” Suzanne Goh, a mother with an autistic child shared her experience.
Goh is a practicing doctor in Singapore and has been practicing in the field of Pediatric Medicine for almost 20 years. She is one of the directors of Embrace Autism, a not-for-profit organisation in Singapore.
Embrace Autism aims at helping parents who have children on the autism spectrum, to learn a different way of helping their kids.
Goh said her son Zachary, had no eye contact, no words, was in his own world and didn’t seem to need anyone for anything except food.
“We started frantically looking for therapy. We tried so many different things.
“We started him with a very intensive therapy. We poured whatever savings we had.
“He changed from a two-and-a-half-year-old boy who was in his own world but happy, to a five-year-old boy with no speech skill, no eye contact and crying all the time. He didn’t improve.
“My husband Paul Chan, made a decision to ask the therapist to leave,” she said.
“Then we read a book, entitled Autism Breakthrough, which has a summary of The Son-Rise Program.
“We followed what was in the book and played with our son, and there was improvement. So we booked our tickets and went to the United States to attend a five-day training program to learn how to run The Son-Rise Program for our child,” she said during the free workshop for parents with autistic children in Komtar on June 29.
Goh said her son was also echolalic.
“I remembered the first sentence he spoke to me was really funny.
“My son was really into the movie Frozen.
“He would sing all the songs but had not said a word to us. He had what we called echolalia.
“We brought him with us to the United States when we went for the training programme.
“It was end of October and it was cold. I was trying to get him to wear his jacket but he was wiggling his arms.
“So I grabbed hold of him, telling him that he needs to put on his jacket because it’s cold outside.
“He looked at me… perfect eye contact, and said, ‘the cold never bothered me anyway’.
“I didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry so I did both,” she said.
Goh said that first spontaneous sentence from her son helped her to understand her son more.
“It helped me realised that my son actually knew a lot more than I thought. Obviously he knew what he was singing in order to use those words to tell me how he felt,” she said.
Goh said her son improved tremendously.
“Six months after we started The Son-Rise Program for our son, he woke me up one day and asked me ‘I love you mummy, will you marry me?’,” Goh said, drawing laughter from the crowd.
Goh said her son now speaks in full sentences.
“He raps, he beatboxes and creates his own poems,” she added.
Penang Women and Family Development, Gender Inclusiveness and Religions Other Than Islam Committee chairman Chong Eng commended Embrace Autism for organising such a noble event for the parents of children with special needs.
“The Penang government is honoured and happy to be part of your meaningful event.
“I hope that your programme can reach out to more people, for them to learn the technique and skill to help their children with special needs.
“There are still people who do not know where to get help.
“We need the media to help organisations such as this to reach out to the community,” Chong Eng said.
For more details on Embrace Autism, e-mail to [email protected] or visit www.embraceautism.sg
Story and pix by Christopher Tan