Autisable

diagnosis

When one discusses a diagnosis of Autism for either themselves, or their loved one.

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Matt Davis

Adopting autistic traits

Is it too severe to say autism serves up a degree of daily dread on parents? Perhaps not. There’s certainly a never ending sense of uncertainty.


We awake to thoughts of ‘what will we face today –anxiety, disobedience, delirium, depression?’ Equally we’ll be aware he may elicit his extraordinary bouts of compassion. Heavily physical with kisses, cuddles and unreconstructed, purely learnt and 100%-felt talk of ‘mummy you’re such a pretty princess; daddy you’re a lovely boy’. But they could be surpassed by a sadness just as swiftly. Cruelty can creep in too.

He can sway between extremes alarmingly swiftly; middle ground is rarely inhabited by Isaac. Hence our every day, every waking hour default is ‘on edge’. Always prepared for some heavy lifting.



Our nervousness will vary vastly in terms of intensity. Weekends and holidays, where a lack of routine can take Isaac hostage in horrible ways, could mean it’s heightened. A precisely prepared school day with plans aplenty and a sense of cautious calm could even kickstart the day – although my stoic wife may have to suppress post school potential fallout.


Every morning on awaking, Isaac religiously stays in bed – still and silent – waiting for me to venture into his room (a behaviour so ingrained and important to him that he won’t entertain any alternative). So I always go in early, never lulled by what could be construed as contented quiet, anticipating his strange state of mind. Which then needs some diligent and delicate unpicking.

Very likely compounding the need to confirm the day’s itinerary, something will be mentally fidgeting him which he will attempt to articulate through his repetition or recollection of facts:



Like a train journey he recently did that stopped at an unannounced station: “daddy, why did the train stop at Basingtoke on the way to St. Ives on the national rail services? Why didn’t the driver say so? Because he did say the train stops at Reading and… (lists them all)?”


Or something about me and my work; that “last Thursday when you left your office it was when I was having dinner not after I brushed my teeth…”

Maybe it’s his grandmother’s new journey to work. Something someone said at school. Events, dates, buses, trains.


All matters of fact. Delivered and endlessly repeated in a matter of fact way. But, paradoxically, defying a manic-ness in his head that needs dissembling. Because incubated within this solid, samey information is a fluid, frenzied pool of concern. The facts mere codes and triggers for what could be at first a whine, then a wail.

My wife possesses a particular patience with connected tenacity to confidently locate his real worry about the day ahead: maybe he knows nothing’s on in the afternoon and that’s scary, perhaps he’s going somewhere there may be a dog (he hates and is scared and repelled by them and their, I imagine, erraticism: “dogs are rubbish…,” he’ll say, “they have to go away…stupid dogs”). Or is it a day when I might be home late from work (because I was on the same day last week). Whatever he’s recalling – however long ago – will mean he’s experiencing the same stress levels as if it’s happening there and then, in the moment. His mind can appear a minefield where treading carefully guarantees little in the way of protection from unexpected explosions.


The arrival of his boisterous sister in the room may see him swing into overly disruptive, tough to manage, ebullient behaviour (hysteria, silly toilet humour (I know this is typical for all children!) soon spills into being unmanageably hyper). Before a bout of train sound and station naming stimming (repetitive behaviour) to regulate his mental state and insulate himself from the world. The onset of stimming, this most autistic of trait, a welcome sedative for us all. Affording us a shelter from the slipstream of the condition’s rampant hurricanes. And therein lies a truth about the daily dread autism can unleash. You seek, and take solace in, autistic solutions. The fine line between it constructively dictating your life and destructively defining it starting to fade.

Because at vulnerable times the inventory of knowledge and experience I’ve harnessed about Isaac emits mental tremors in me before I attempt to do pretty much anything. I can catastrophize to the point of crippling anxiety. Indeed I’m certainly not the first person to comment that parents behave in autistic ways so absorbed are they in their child’s autism and its attributes. And so keen are they for an antidote to the chaotic autism-unfriendly, spontaneous society we live in. It’s common sense damage limitation. But it can also be damaging. I know that.


Whatever, wherever, whenever, whoever, the first thing I will always do is second guess what Isaac’s autism has in store. Forever. But when the guessing overrides everything, when it becomes a survival tactic in torrid times, you retreat into a risk averse bubble of inaction and inertia for fear of the helter skelter.

A recent holiday triggered that survival tactic which then overstayed its welcome so suffocating was its nature. The first half of the holiday was as care free and conventional a holiday I believe we’ve had. With extended family nearby, we stayed in a cottage on a cute little farm; it was symmetrical, organised with well-behaved animals. Which family members visited us and when could be plotted and itemised by him. Every day the chickens and sheep and ducks, safe behind fences, could be fed with Farmer Tim at the same time. His previous blanket wariness of the animals became an accepted awareness. No feeding of course, and a demand that the animals ‘stay away please’ but it was an (somewhat edited) idyllic few days.


Then, a mini adventure to the beach, and the fun he’d been working so hard to have, turned sinister for him. Chucking pebbles crazily into the sea one minute. Throwing an almighty tantrum the next. All because a gallivanting dog brushed past him. His structured world invaded by random disorder. He screamed and screamed. We returned to the cottage, all attempts to appease failed. I strive to empathise sometimes. Feebly, I imagine his never abating sense of fear when something like this has tipped him is like I’d be if I knew a rat was in a room I was in. Permanently.

And from that point on we kind of lost him, and perhaps ourselves, to the trammelled existence that a blinkered adherence to autism can serve you. Windows shut for fear of flies. Gulls swooping outside sending shivers; even stopping the daily feeding, detected by my wife who sensed Isaac torn between routine and fear. When fear wins, you’re in a dark place. His eating pretty much ended. Stimming became the only respite, but even that would only satisfy him for so long.

Making Isaac authentically happy (as opposed the faux happiness of transport talk or being boisterous) is hard to come by. When I offered an early return from the holiday he visibly loosened like a tight knot magically undoing itself. He played nicely with his sister, ate a sandwich and even went outside. But was that happiness or so-big-it’s-impossible-to-quantify relief?


Home wasn’t the pure remedy. We spent a good few weeks at the mercy of autism anxiety. Behaving too under its spell. Clumsily, almost unconsciously. Its traits, or our literal interpretation of them, pervading our thoughts. Always second guessing. Always a little too on edge.

A process of marginal losses happens. Isaac’s limited eating, limits further. His propensity to do anything lessens. We all follow a strict routine. Meltdowns aplenty. Ipads are a relief. Life contracts to very little when all these compromises are made.



And liberating us from this not so long ago were the objective Custodians of Isaac’s potential and welfare and hope. His therapists and teachers at his sanctuary, his school. Who eased us in from the autism waste ground we were scrabbling about in. They spoke of his timetables, how he’s loving laughing and socialising at school. Their pride in him. His hilarity, imagination. Mostly though, they implored us to own our lives. Leave him with grandparents. Indulge but know when not to. We innately know what he can and can’t do, when to or to not push him.


I’ve tried to psychologically reframe some of my knowledge about him. Revisit the times he’s done the unexpected and brave. Like allow the dentist to pull and clean and scrape before boldly saying, “it’s a bit difficult having them cleaned. Can you clean them next time please.” Or managing the sensory discomfort of a swimming cap and noise of the pool and engage joyously in a swimming class (but my frustration then at the flat lining in lessons, his desire to repeat in the lesson and stim frustrating me. Unfairly.) Transient times where he courageously leaves his comfort zone.

Importantly, the next time I’m caught in an autism rut, where I lose myself to its supposed traits, I’ll try to tell myself it’s too complex a condition for such, well, crass simplification.


When I need to dig deep, because the desire to anything has disappeared, perhaps a way of positive thinking is to believe in autism’s difference. Isaac’s hard wiring means he deals in hard facts. They often belie inner stresses, as I mentioned at the beginning of this article. But sometimes they don’t.

We really can lighten his mood with a slightly more muscular approach. I barter with him – eat, play, see certain folk; and you can then tell me whatever fascinating encyclopaedic bit of travel trivia you absolutely have to tell me (like that there are three Streathams on the national rail services which he’ll list, before naming linking bus numbers and more.) We can dampen that daily dread – it’s possible on occasions.


Because we can’t always unpick, always fret. Maybe there is simple joy for him in the concrete and whole. His mindboggling knowledge of the UK transport system defies belief so thorough and accurate is it. His inner eye visualises the coherence of lines and roads and tracks and numbers and sounds across the whole country. And feeling like a feat of memory he reports it all back. All the time. It can be a wonder.

But that doesn’t mean there’s a beauty and creativity and unpredictability to him too – and what he says that, maybe, just maybe, we can embrace and foster and ‘go with’. This was illustrated when my wife talked to him last week about where he came from. “My tummy” she said, as you would. “Why, did you eat me?” he asked back.


(I always try to reply)

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Matt Davis

Always feeling autism’s presence

There’s an invisibility shrouding autism that I see vividly, as if in neon lights, so evident is it.


People will themselves to perceive anything but autism. Whether through well meaning, a fear of difference, or simple (and maybe most often) unawareness. I will myself to always use my autism viewfinder, and usually spot a symptom, reason or peculiarity that forms a line, bold or dotted, back to the condition – so embedded in its world am I.

What I am witnessing now in my 21 month old daughter, Tabitha, seemingly on a typical developmental trajectory, emphasizes the functioning of a toddler without autism versus one with. She points at things, babbles back and forth with me. She waves and plays appropriately, with imagination, impetus and meaning. Tea parties, pottering around, blowing kisses, feeding dolls. She seeks interaction and play with other children. My, she gains my attention – and in a confident, communicative manner (some would say diva-ish). She shows a powerful instinct and intuition for moving around, responding, creating, learning.


There’s a loud and clear, forever hovering, question mark around her speech, or lack of it though. She’s sort of making out words, sounds and syllables. But probably not whole words. The nagging concerns around this single developmental drag remain just that. Just. I’m sure people in our situation seek out questions where answers aren’t needed or don’t even exist. And the reality I’m anchored to is that so, so much of what she does do, Isaac didn’t at a similar age.

In those early years then, whilst I saw all what was atypical and was silently alarmed, autism awareness wasn’t there to provide me with any sort of solution. Not till his diagnosis just after his third birthday. More telling, I believe others – friends, family, professionals – perhaps saw very little in the little he was doing; unrelated ‘delays’, toddler tantrums, maybe indiscipline, rogue parenting.


Because what was the most potent display of this alternative, different, disturbing (to me) behaviour? Simple upset. Tabitha’s tears don’t tear through me like Isaac’s always did (and on occasion, still do. Not being prepared for a haircut. A disruption to routine. Autism’s sting always lurks). And therein lies the subtlety. People don’t analyse tears and anger. After all, they just appear to be, well, tears and anger.

When Tabitha cries not wanting to get off a train, or let go of a toy, the toddler tears subside rapidly. In similar occasions Isaac wept and wept and screeched and shouted. His despair was dogged.


Fast forward to now and of course the intense intervention – speech and language, the one on one at school, life skills and more – Isaac has been subjected to, coordinated with comprehensive home parental ‘work’ (my wife the unsung, utter hero here), has set him on a journey where his behaviour and interactions bear little resemblance to those early deficiencies. However it’s not that he’s simply caught up or performs tasks typically – not when you delve and decipher, peering behind the person, assessing the actions.

What has come naturally to Tabitha, took, and can still take, painstaking endeavour and laborious learning for Isaac. Even now her holding of a pen or cutlery, physical gestures, reciprocal cues and more come easier and more fluidly for this little girl. Compared to Isaac’s heavy, laden, elaborate approach – remembering to share, comprehending the definition of it, why it’s a good, nice thing to do; moving his hand back and forth as it signals hello or goodbye. The defaults for Isaac are so unspontaneous, everything needs accurate recall, industry, an all-encompassing literal-ness that can be construed as one dimensional. That’s before accounting for the myriad sensory processing challenges and absolute engrained commitment to memorising, parrot fashion learning of every speck of detail, important or not, and of course, repetitive (not productive) play. It’s all so burdensome.


Someone with autism (and by proxy, family members) experiences life to the extreme, its daily ups and downs. Autism quite often feels like life on the edge. Mundane and maddening often, but on the edge nevertheless. Outside the norm. Marginalised. Unregulated, uncomfortable, unstuck. Envious and enraged on the bad days.

Maybe people are uncomfortable, or more probably, unaware of this and seek to smooth out. Making invisibility of the condition as glaringly visible to me as it’s always been:


Isaac’s acute anxiety means hearing a firework can trigger impossible-to-sedate fear at bedtime. But all kids get a bit frightened at night, right? Perhaps not to the extent that obsessing over Firework night runs well into March and beyond. Regularly enforcing that next ‘November I’ll sleep with mummy and daddy’’ and that each night imploring me to say, identically to yesterday that ‘no, there won’t be fireworks’, and ‘if there are, I won’t see them?’. Over and over and over again.

What about love for train leaflets and maps (identical, similar, functional, whatever); the need to possess and pore over. Surely lots of boys collect and catalogue stuff, don’t they? Maybe, but not when that hunger for hoarding cannot, will not, be sated, masking a deeper, more traumatic struggle with the world. Pinpointing Oyster contactless payment leaflets at stations and demanding I take 20 – that he already has – can lead to calm and a transient contentment. But the paraphernalia rapidly turns to a crutch, joining the untouchable hundreds that populate his room. Inanimate but perilous, should they vanish from his watch.


To say haircuts were my least preferred of enforced chores as a 7 year old would be an understatement. To say I hated them wouldn’t. But that’s absolutely not to say they were harrowing like they clearly are for Isaac. The feeling of circus knives scraping his scalp and bright lights blinding his eyes. Gaudy mirrors, nightmares from the last horrific haircut swirling. A scraped neck because of the hairdresser’s inability to control his angry, enraged body contortions. And worse of all, afterwards; hairs, swarming and crawling into every nook and cranny of the poor boy’s body. Only changing clothes there and then into new soft fresh ones would suffice.

Food phobias, at times an inability to eat, only eating specific foods in specific locations at specific times. Well, we all know fussy eaters. Not to the extent where hunger can be pretty much bridled thanks to the maelstrom of other irritating, infuriating issues clawing away at him. Hunger almost becomes a controlling comfort for Isaac – I guess.


Indeed, food ensures we have a daily taste of the complexities and conundrums of Isaac’s autism. When he wakes up and even before his usual, daily reciting to me of ‘today’s timetable at school daddy’ is a strangely forlorn ‘my tummy is full, I don’t need breakfast’, what’s imminent is an unleashing of emotion verging – or hurtling into – a breakdown.


His wonky food narrative that distorts and disrupts mainly my wife’s days is increasingly difficult to follow. There are the textural, colour and sensual challenges. There’s also the need to not talk about his lunchtime, odd counterintuitive games, where we mustn’t mention what he’s ate at school. Even if praising for eating something healthy.

In fact, the lunchbox rules are oddly simple, just very tricky to adhere to. We can’t make his lunchbox in front of him and there must be no mention of its contents. At all. It needs to magic itself into his school bag, out of sight, out of mind. If that happens he eats the contents at school, every last bite. If he sees any of it being made and/or any of what’s inside, he refuses to eat it.


The old adage ‘They’ll eat when they’re hungry’ is riddled with falsities. As my wife very cleverly deduced – nerves and anxiety suppress the appetite. However hungry one should be.

There is a flip side to all these behaviours that seem similar to typical children but are so different. The reigned-in ups. Rare but as not as rare as they used to be. His liberated joy when all goes to plan. Like a Sunday session at my spacious workplace. A warming, server-whirring silence. The environment as he expects, calm and sensitive, with people accepting his questioning of names and addresses and nearest stations, adoringly enjoying his descriptions of them as ‘handsome men’ or ‘lovely ladies’. The sometimes bizarre conversation starters, minutiae infused comments, squeezing and infectious physicality can be seen as the eccentric behaviour of a young child (he looks young for 7). For example, his phrasing (‘my eyes are wet’ when he laughs and laughs, ‘will my head come off’ when someone tries to explain ‘open mind’) can make people enchanted by him. But I wonder, is his age a big factor in this generosity of spirit?


There’s an all or nothingness about invisibility and autism. That’s probably to do with age. I imagine a point when he’s older that the invisibility I’ve talked about morphs into something visible, exaggeratedly so. Where all that people see is autism – and in epic proportions.

This is a hunch, I admit. But I suspect a reality thanks to the stats around bullying, exclusion, lack of provision, low educational achievement, poorly trained teachers, homelessness, unemployment, depression and more. Not to mention pure labelling and stereotyping.



I guess a healthy awareness, acceptance and an appreciation of difference is what we can strive for. A young teen at Isaac’s school, when Isaac was bombarding him with odd questions said strangely joyfully ‘this place is weird… it’s probably why I belong here’. It made me smile – a self-aware comment on difference, and why it’s ok.


For now just giving Isaac the tools to balance his behaviour can feel like ploughing through treacle. The effort and endeavour by us and him to display effortless behaviours is monumental. Maybe that’s why what we see clearly, others can’t at all. It’s why only if you’re living with autism 24/7 can you really be exposed to the peculiarities, torment and turbulence. To its shear relentlessness.
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Discovering Problems, Creating Potential

Isaac’s immersion into his specialist school (for children with high functioning autism) has shown some of the marks of a fairly bruising process. And the onerous work has only just begun. We’re seeing a sensitive but substantial stripping back of some seriously stubborn layers of entrenched behaviours, habits, limitations, fears. I have no doubt that so many areas of his development have until now been neglected, denting his constitution. Physically and mentally. A shudder is sent down my spine, contemplating what would happen if he were to remain saddled with certain, what are rightly classified as, deficits.


These deficits, in areas such as strength and touch, have selfishly taken away a realm of positivity I may have always possessed. Dissecting them dispels any romanticism of autism, or ‘he’ll catch up’ that may have roamed, well-intentioned and benignly, in mainstream. They provide a reality check that until now the day to day handling of Isaac’s lifelong condition has been lackadaisical.

He blended as well as he could at his old (mainstream) school considering the pastoral approach that was necessitated by class size, desired integration, and non-qualified staff. Such were the goodwill and intentions and support, I hesitate to cite his considerable developments were in spite of the imposed ethos not because of it. However, his current school’s classroom assessments jettison any ambiguity about a need for intense and individually tailored programmes.


He has what occupational therapists report as ‘definite dysfunctions’ in social participation, hearing, touch, body awareness and balance. At his previous (mainstream) school, both Isaac and his teachers must have needed to adopt crude compensation mechanisms to integrate with the workings of a curriculum that couldn’t adapt appropriately.

I’m imagining that he was sensitively placed in the periphery for physical exercise and any ball sports so his underdeveloped body awareness and balance stayed that way. His stretched teachers must have tolerated rare scribbles when he attempted handwriting because there was no one to provide the one on one labour intensity required.



Through no fault of anyone, Isaac would have been drifting in activities, seemingly content and being involved ever so slightly. But this drift, this surface deep thinly veiled non-developmental behaviour, easy to repeat for him, easier to accept for teachers, would have been insidiously stunting and indeed marginalising. There was daily fall out in terms of his moods that I’ve talked about before. Knowing that long term damage was clearly happening too has unsettled me somewhat.


Social participation and playtimes expose brightest the folly of the non-specific, wholly inclusive approach. Galloping around making train sounds was his self-stimulating behaviour for surviving the furious environment that is the school playground. The soothing repetition went way beyond its initial positive effects, explaining precisely his deficits in play and social areas.

Indeed, in one of our more heart crushing sessions with Isaac’s psychotherapist, she made the knocked-me-for-six observation that Isaac doesn’t know how to play. He simply hasn’t ever done it. Play, a natural, sought after, intuitive, life affirming activity for typical children. An alien, complicated, bamboozling concept for Isaac.


(And how’s this for a topsy turvy thought: Isaac taking his sister’s toys and studiously playing with them alone is a good thing. Sublimating what appears to be jealousy into a desire to ape and learn.)

Heart breaking by the psychotherapist. But, as with so much emanating from his new school, enlightening too – offering up glimmers of hope. Specialist school is bruising for its pinpointing of challenges, healing for how it deals with them.

Like a slow turning tanker, sent ever so slightly off course, I’ve discovered riding waves of positivity and potential, knowing real, honest insight can reap so much.


Take handwriting. My inclination was to wallow in reports of inabilities to develop finger separation, his frustrations at the necessary tripod grip, the clear need for major work with fine motor skills. Whereas Isaac’s tenacious teacher pushes and compliments and improves and stimulates. His writing has literally transformed. At night he deliberately and defiantly stretches his fingers, discovering a dexterity, before formally announcing to me, “Daddy, today a certificate has been awarded to Isaac Davis for holding a pen properly. Well done Isaac.”


Isaac’s weekly certificates, which he avidly collects and collates, reveal so much of the school’s (and therefore his) industry. ‘Having three bites of a carrot’, ‘dealing with change’, ‘good listening and not having to repeat’ – in short, he’s working, and being worked, very hard in those areas that appear an anathema to his autism. Non-intervention is these areas has led to the deficits and therefore habits and limitations. Everyone, myself very much included, had given up, kept a blind hope, or consciously avoided these life skills with Isaac. Now life skills form part of his week, with patient, single minded professionals giving him the tools to succeed. Which in turn gives us the confidence to carry on the work at home – knowing when he can deal with something new, or eating his dinner at the table, tasting a new food he may have tried at school, maybe parking in a different place to a previous time. It’s far from easy, we’re fine perfecting the skill of distinguishing real distress from autistic like behaviours he can learn to manage. He will always have the generic sensory processing difficulties. The meltdowns are still explosive, world ending and catastrophic –  in many ways they are amplified and more gruelling for all parties. Transition, people leaving, will always be testing. But we are learning, just like him, a little more what his capabilities are and where discipline works.

All this is not to say autism is not championed, celebrated and respected. Indeed, it’s the filter upon which the school appears to make and evaluate every decision. They’ve seen vividly Isaac’s visual approach to learning – playing to this strength, they use the visual timetable which he rattles off to me, the whole week, in order, at least twelve subjects a day. He enchants teachers and pupils alike with his brilliant recollection of facts. This part of his autism is nourished and cherished.

Yet at times he can struggle to answer a simple question. He can be caught in a self-imposed routine and repetition rut.


The school will slavishly break down each topic in his timetable into explicitly described and audited mini chunks that he knows and expects. But then they may introduce a ‘surprise’ activity within this tight framework. Like learning comprehension in a reading class – about a certain book and character he’s prepared for. So he’s developing thinking skills and small change in one brilliantly efficient ten minute session. Totally, utterly inspired and priceless.

Likewise, his repetition needs are an ingrained feature of Isaac’s very existence. Always will be. But gentle easing out of, not so heavy reliance on, can take place. The genius strategy here is mentoring sessions with the elder boys. Who “like to repeat; we did when we were young like Isaac, but we don’t anymore. Isaac won’t always need to.” Who better to understand a little boy with autism than a big boy with autism? Who knows the desires and impulses and defaults. And can integrate them with socially appropriate behaviour. This is life enhancing stuff of a dizzying degree.


One massive truth is Isaac’s autism has never seemed as tangible as it is now. Despite all the intervention. And that feels correct and just how it should be. His vocabulary continues to expand to significant levels with it all appearing learnt like one would learn a foreign language. He seems to rapidly search his abundance of learnt phrases when needing to express something. “I’m going to read a book, just once, because it will tire me out. Then we won’t do it for a while.” Or when he senses change: “Yes daddy, I have changed my mind, you can drive on that road, because it is like a diversion.” And when he’s happy: “I love school, I want to go there today and forever, I want to give the building kisses.” In the morning: “Is it morning time? Good morning daddy< I haven’t been asleep for a while…”

His order can always be jumbled, with tenses astray. “Where’s the 302 bus, I might have lost it.” And it’s all delivered with a clunky, metronomic rhythm. This is him. It has an almost beautiful realism and logic. When I said to him “come on mister” recently and he got agitated and countered “No! I’m Isaac. Mister is for teachers”, I could but go concur (kind of) apologise and go with him. The school seem on the same page – it feels like they write the pages. Gloriously they’re as smitten as we are by my son.


His interests remain at best perfunctory. He loves lampposts; they light up his life. “But I love lampposts daddy, they make me happy.” Counting, spotting anomalies, one’s on during the day, off at night; he has a photographic recollection of locations, types, flickering ones – every single permutation of a lamppost’s life. They offer so much. And this dry information floods our airwaves as it does bus facts and general commentary and comings and goings.  

These sort of passions – their pros, their pitfalls – inform the armoury of knowledge the school possess about Isaac. They can then work with him, push buttons, reward and restrict, so accelerating to a potential. Teaching him life skills for example in a methodical, easy to digest, autism friendly manner, gives his preparation for an integrated, inclusive life. This is what I feel when I hear: “Today I did life skills. I made toast, daddy do you want toast? With honey or marmalade. In a toast rack, that’s where toast is made. Do you want toast?”


This is no political polemic about specialist schools versus mainstream. It’s about finding the best possible place for my son and his autism – with the best possible professionals and best possible environment for him to develop, and who knows, work towards a brilliant future.

A pertinent comment his teacher made to us when discussing his substantial handwriting training said it all really:


“He needs to write. He will need to write a job application form one day.”



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