I can't remember how old I was. I think I was 13 or 14. So it wasn't very long after Karan received his autism diagnosis.

The semblance of "normal life" was slowly slipping away from our family. We'd stopped doing random things we used to do together. Gone were trips to the cinema, gone were long drives, and something that completely shattered our going out to restaurants happened.

One night, we'd decided to go out for a meal. We went to an Indian, vegetarian restaurant in Dubai, that we used to frequent a lot many years ago. Karan was still 4 or 5 at this time.

We sat down to eat, placed our order. Karan started whining a little bit; we realized eventually it was the noise in the restaurant bothering him. He kept crying for a bit, as we tried to calm him down. It didn't work immediately; his diagnosis was new enough that we were still at a learning curve, still working out how to handle him.

After a lot of stares, mutterings and pointed glares, the restaurant manager came over to our table.

We pretty much got kicked out of the restaurant.

Apparently the other diners complained about my brother and the nuisance he was causing, and the manager said it was better we left. When we tried to protest and explain the situation ("this child has special needs" etc), we heard a rather loud: "Why don't they keep their retarded children at home?" comment.

We left.

I think it scarred us for life. We tried going to another restaurant weeks later, but as soon as Karan kicked up a fuss, we upped and left. Perhaps my parents didn't want a repeat getting-thrown-out scenario. We've never really gone to a restaurant since. Food courts yes (let's face it, even if Karan screams like a banshee, no one's going to hear him there), restaurants no.

I accept it wasn't completely the manager's fault; I imagine the diners were having a go at him and upset about their meal being "spoiled" by the crying child. But there was clearly no policy on dealing with situations like this. Yes, it was a nascent time then for special needs, but oh lord, how it hurt. How it hurt.

I don't blame my parents for leaving. But I now realize that had I been older and in a position to make the decision, I would not have left. My mother and I have realized (in hindsight), that there's no point in tucking our tails between our legs and running. It's important to stand and fight.

You might say, surely we have a responsibility to not bother other people.

Well, I'm SORRY if my brother's autism bothers you, but frankly, I'm just going to tell you to get stuffed. Who the hell are you to tell me that you're entitled to enjoy a meal with your family at a nice place, and I am not? My brother is not?

Now you'll say, well he was crying anyway so he clearly wasn't enjoying it. No, he wasn't. I agree. My point is, with autism, he needs to be exposed to "normal" things that everyone else is. I want him to go out, I want him to experience what everyone else does. By shutting ourselves at home, we're just segregating ourselves more than YOU are already doing with your behaviour towards us.

So yes, I will take Karan to restaurants and places where he may cry or kick up a fuss. I will stay as long as I can with him to acclimatise him to the surroundings because it is important to him, and to us. For example, I took him to Chili's on his birthday a few years ago; we got him molten chocolate cake to celebrate (he loved the cake there FYI). He did make a little noise (happy noises to be fair!) and kept trying to bang the cutlery on the table, but if anyone looked at us oddly, I glared back. It's my thing.

I dare you to tell me to leave. I'm older, bigger and frankly, have had it with your shit.

Oh and that restaurant that told us they'd rather we left before they evicted us? We never frequented it again.

Cross-posted on FooDee

I have not been able to put down my thoughts for a long time now. Don't know why. Something always came up, or my thoughts were always muddled, or I was just being plain lazy. My daughter Devina is always encouraging me to write more and I keep on procrastinating. So anyway here I am trying to say things which I hope make sense.

I posted about this last year too.

I'm ashamed to say I'd nearly given up since then. I know people, on more than just an acquaintance level, who say "retard" all the time. I tried with a few, but they just don't change. They promise they won't say it, but then they do. I feel embarrassed that I've given up because every time they say the word, I cringe. I cringe and I don't understand why they use it. I cringe and hate myself because I feel like I'm letting Karan down by keeping quiet.

I said a lot last year about how it hurts. But this video from Love That Max says a lot more. I did shed a few tears when I saw this, because instead of Max, I kept seeing my brother, Karan.

Here's to me not keeping quiet any longer.

I came across this link on Twitter, have a look. Some things said in this video:

"I've seen Rain Man."

"You're autistic? I'm so sorry."

"Oh I've read Temple Grandin's book. Do you like cows?"

"What are you...retarded?"

"I like autistic people as much as I like real people."

What does everyone else think? 

As I sat in the plush chair in a salon in Bombay a few days ago, I nearly started crying. No, the heat of the blow dryer wasn't too much, neither did the searing hot iron burn my scalp.

I was getting my hair done to attend a wedding function that night...and an idle mind can lead to many things. This post might surprise many, including my mother, who probably has no idea I think this way [Edit: I just showed my Mom the post before hitting publish and she surprised me telling me she knew I thought this way]. Writing is cathartic though, and here I am, to share my experience with others who may be in the same boat.

I'm, annoyingly enough, at that age where people are asking about when I'm getting married (in desi years, I believe I'm near the end of my shelf life hahaha). Luckily, my parents aren't too fussed about me tying the knot any time soon, so my Mom has been deflecting all attempts from well-meaning relatives to get me to see a boy. "No, she's too busy with her career, not now," my Mom says (I LOVE YOU MOM, YOU KNOW THAT?).

Anyway, as much as deflections are being made...I do think about the future. Who wouldn't? Sure, I'd like to get married someday, with someone whom I love and who loves me (therefore putting a spanner into a traditional "arranged marriage" concept for me). But there is a condition to it: he has to love and accept my brother too.

I've gone through enough recently and seen others go through the same...a situation where one is rejected (as a potential wife/daughter-in-law) due to the existence of a child with special needs in the family. So now I've kind of brainwashed myself to believe that, in general, most people are narrow-minded and as a result of this, it's highly unlikely I will ever find a man whom I can love and who will accept my brother, not just as a part of the family, but as someone whom I will be taking care of eventually. I think it's a defense mechanism I'm employing, to avoid being hurt again.

Apart from this, another thought entered my head as the stylist tonged my hair and curled my ends: what if I do find a man like this and end up getting married? Can you imagine the logistics?

My brother is not a high-functioning autistic. He cannot speak, he only babbles. We still have to give him a shower and clean him once he uses the toilet. While he has progressed a lot through the years, he is still in need of 24/7 vigilance. Anyway, weddings are noisy and long affairs...how on earth is he going to attend ceremonies like the sangeet for example (an event where people basically dance, eat and drink in celebration)? Will he be able to handle the noise? What about the people? The crowds? If he's even able to attend, what about my Mom? Can she really enjoy herself? What about looking after my brother? Will she be able to participate in the festivities?

All these thoughts kept repeating for each of the traditional ceremonies I'd expect to have if I was getting married. Before you say: don't have these ceremonies, let me tell you, I'm a bit traditional at heart. If I ever get married (note my defense mechanism of "if" - it's never "when"), I want the whole shebang. It doesn't have to be necessarily big in terms of number of people there, but big in terms of absolute fun.

I'm so paranoid, innit? If...if...if.

At this point...I open my eyes, see my hair falling down over perfect curls on my shoulder, blink my eyes to dry the tears away... and move on. I allowed myself my 10 minutes of wallowing, now I was done and ready to enjoy the night with full-blown enthusiasm (I did, in 3.8-inch postbox red heels at that). As the song goes...the future's not ours to see.

Warning: Long post ahead. Settle down with a cuppa if interested in autism and/or special needs.

Hark, I hear the Medieval Ages calling...okay, just the 1950s, and Dr Tony Humphreys is ushering it in.

First, read the following article which was printed in the Irish Examiner, which I stumbled across only yesterday:

 

by Tony Humphreys

Do not read this if you have had a difficult day/week!

Monday 6th Feb, 11.30 am. This article has still not appeared on the online version of the paper.

A team of researchers at Cambridge University is currently exploring the connection between high-achieving parents, such as engineers, scientists and computer programmers and the development of their children. Professor Simon Baron-Cohen, who is the director of the Autism Research Centre at the university, says there are indications that adults who have careers in areas of science and math are more likely to have autistic children.

In studies in 1997 and 2001 it was found that the children and grandchildren of engineers were more likely to be autistic and that mathematicians had higher rates of autism than other professions. What is shocking is that Dr Baron-Cohen and the team of researchers are one: assuming that autism is a scientific fact and, two: missing the glaringly obvious fact that if the adults they researched live predominanently in their heads and possess few or no heart qualities, their children will need to find some way of defending themselves against the absence of expressed love and affection and emotional receptivity.

After all, the deepest need of every child is to be unconditionally loved and the absence of it results in children shutting down emotionally themselves because to continue to spontaneously reach out for love would be far too painful. 

Children's wellbeing mostly depends on emotional security - a daily diet of nurture, love, affection, patience, warmth, tenderness, kindness and calm responses to their expressed welfare and emergency feelings. To say that these children have a genetic and/or neurobiological disorder called autism or ASD (autistic spectrum disorder) only adds further to their misery and condemns them to a relationship history where their every thought and action is interpreted as arising from their autism.

It is frequently the case that it is when these children go to school that their emotional and social withdrawal of eccentricities are noticed, mainly by teachers, who themselves can struggle with how best to respond to these children. An unconscious collusion can emerge between parents and teachers to have these children psychiatrically assessed so that the spotlight is put on the children and not their adult carers' own emotional and social struggles. Regretfully, the relationship contexts of the childrens' lives are not examined and their mature development is often sacrificed on the fires of the unresolved emotiuonal defences of those adults who are responsible for their care.

It is important to hold to the fact that these carers do not consciously block their children's wellbeing, but the unconscious hope of children is that other adults (teachers, relatives, educational psychologists, care workers) that when they are emotionally and socially troubled, it is their adult carers who often need more help than they do. 

Indeed, my experience in my own psychological practice is that when parents and teachers resolve their own fears and insecurities, children begin to express what they dare not express before their guardians resolved their own emotional turmoil.

A clear distinction needs to be made between the autism described by psychiatrist Leo Kanner in 1943 and the much more recently described ASD (autistic spectrum disorder, often referred to as Asperger's syndrome). The former 'condition' was an attempt to understand severely emotionally withdrawn children, the latter concept, which is being used in an alarmingly and rapidly increasing way, is an attempt to explain children's more moderate emotional and social difficulties. Curiously - and not at all explained by those health and educational professionals who believe that autism and ASD are genetic and/or neurobiological disorders - is the gender bias of being more diagnosed in boys (a ratio of four to one). This bias is also found with ADHD. Surely that gender phenomenon indicates the probability that boys are reared differently to girls and that due to social and cultural factors boys respond to the troubling behaviours of their adult carers in ways that are radically different to girls. 

What is equally distressing is that, as for ADHD, a whole industry involving research, assessment, screening, education and treatment has been developed, despite the absence of any scientific basis or test for either the originally 'detected' autism or for the broader construct of ASD.

Sami Timimi, a consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist and two colleagues rigorously examined over 5000 research articles on autism and ASD and found no scientific basis for what they now refer to as mythical disorders. They outline their findings in their book 'The Myth of Autism' (2011). The conclusion of their indepty studies is that "there is no such thing as autism and the label should be abolished".

The authors are not saying that the children are not emotionally and socially troubled. What they are saying is - and I concur with them - that focus needs to be on the relationship contexts of these children's livews, and to take each child for the individual he or she is and to examine closely the family and community narratives and discover creative possibilities for change and for more dynamic and hopeful stories to emerge for both the children and their carers.

Dr Tony Humphreys is a consultant clinical psychologist, author and national and international speaker. His book 'All About Children" is relevant to todays article. 

I quite honestly, wanted to curse out loud when I read this. You know what this guy is talking about??? He's essentially trying to eradicate all the progress the community has made towards understanding autism, it's going back to the dark ages, when doctors didn't know what autism was and decided, HEY LET'S BLAME THE WOMAN OF THE FAMILY!

Ever heard of Refrigerator Mom Theory? This was the theory floated around in the 1950s and 1960s that said autism was caused by detached mothers, those who could not emotionally bond with their kids. Often, when reading accounts from the past, you will find parents who say the wife was often blamed for the autism, saying it her coldness that caused the child to retreat within a shell.

This is one of the letters that appeared in the newspaper yesterday as part of the outrage sent in by readers:

‘Psychobabble’ has been discredited for decades

Tuesday, February 07, 2012

The article by Tony Humphreys claiming that autism is caused by "cold" or emotionally distant parents, displays such willful ignorance, lack of understanding and density of inaccurate and offensive statements that it is shocking that the Irish Examiner would publish it.

This kind of psycho-babble has been discredited for decades.

Autism is a biological, brain-based disorder. It is also a genetic disorder. The scientific evidence for these statements is overwhelming. We now know of more than 100 distinct genetic conditions that can result in autistic symptoms.

These conditions affect early development of the brain and researchers are making progress in understanding how that results in the specific symptoms seen in autism, which may range widely in severity.

In contrast, the claims by Mr Humphreys are a throwback to psycho-analytic theories that are completely unsupported by any evidence, as well as being actively damaging and hurtful.

In publishing this waffle, your paper does a disservice to responsible journalism and to all the patients, parents and teachers struggling to cope with the real disabilities caused by this condition.

Kevin Mitchell PhD
Associate professor of genetics and neuroscience,
Trinity College Dublin

 

This appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Tuesday, February 07, 2012

Some other letters linked here: a letter from Kevin Whelan, chief executive at Irish Autism, who said: "What people with autism and their parents need is more research that specifically addresses how the condition occurs — not the defrosting of an assumption over half a century old"; then quite appallingly, a letter of support, from a music therapist no less! I can only imagine parents of children with autism who may be sending their kids to him, won't anymore. 

And then...a response from the newspaper: "Autism controversy - The right to an opinion".

I want to tear this apart, but it has already been done exceedingly well at The Voyage, I suggest you read it there.

I got in touch with Grace app creator, Lisa Maree Domican, who said one thing we can do is this:

If you want to write to the press council 

Press Council of Ireland
1,2 and 3 Westmoreland street, Dublin 2
Republic of Ireland.

info@presscouncil.ie

Also in her blog post, Lisa mentions a Twitter protest idea:

Join Twitter and use the hashtag #ilovemyautistic to refute the myths with examples from your own life
eg: "@lisamareedom: #ilovemyautistic son because he cracks me up! And laughing every day keeps me young"
you get the idea. Now go forth and counter!

I know this is a long post, and there's a lot to get through, but people who are supposedly doctors, and say things like this which can impact the autism community and set us back to where we emerged from, need to know they cannot say whatever they like with impunity, and get away with it.

I shall reiterate for anyone who's stuck reading this post so far: The refrigerator mom theory is bunkum. It's bogus, it's not real, it's absolute SHIT.

As a personal example: my brother was showered with all the love he could get...he had started talking even. He had his grandparents to spoil him silly, an elder sister who was uber-excited about being with a little baby, a Mom who loved her new child. He was a child brought up in love. He still has autism. After the diagnosis, he was showered with even more love, even though it doesn't seem possible we could've loved him any more. He still has autism.

So if anyone, anyone at all, whether he/she has a professional degree, tells you your child's autism is your fault, is because you didn't provide for him/her emotionally, I suggest you walk out of their office/clinic there and then, and name-and-shame them.

Don't blame yourself; you need to be strong to take care of your child, not beat yourself up over a baseless opinion.

One night, I don't know what came over me. I sat and tweeted everything in my mind at that moment that had to do with autism and my brother. My brother is nearly 16, and we've been living with autism since he was about 3. Thirteen years and I still haven't figured everything out...everything there is to know about autism.

The people who support me and my family, you're absolute darlings. Thank you.

I'm also on a quest to find special needs/autism bloggers in the UAE and Middle East. If anyone knows or hears of anyone, please buzz me :)

Also...Happy Birthday Mom! Karan would've been nowhere without everything you do for him, and you know it!

So...for a recap on my late-night thoughts, here: 

View the story "Talking about autism" on Storify]

"It makes me sad; not that he's different but that people can be so mean"

Bookmarks designed by Saurabh Chhabra (@2S8)

What's happening with ManzilBooks? For those joining in now, here's my plea to the community asking to donate books, and here's the first #manzilbooks event we held at Wild Peeta. 

Initially, the school wanted to hold their booksale in June, but haven't hit the required 10,000 books the people helping them organise the event have requested for the sale to be held in the first place.

Where have they reached? With our donations and independent ones, they've passed 4,000. For this reason, they've decided to extend the duration of collection over the summer, and hopefully hit the target and carry out the event after the summer, and after Eid.

So...what's happening?

I'm the contact person for pick-up points near Dubai Media City, Dubai Internet City, Emirates Hills, Greens, Meadows, Springs, Lakes, JLT, JBR, the Marina. Anastasia (@TDAllonsy) will be looking after Dubai Silcon Oasis, Dubai International Academic City (DIAC) and the surrounding areas.

Alternatively, Wild Peeta has generously donated its Dubai World Trade Centre outlet as a drop-off point. If dropping the books off there is more convenient, then please do so. Do drop me an email (autism [at] devinadivecha [dot] com) to let me know you've done so. There's a collection of books people have dropped off along with these lovely bookmarks for people to have a sit-down and read while they eat (make sure you don't drop any food or drink on the books!).

We hope you'll spread the word...if anyone is thinking of getting rid of their books, please point them our way! 

Read the rest of the post by clicking the link above.

Really identify with this post, and I'm sure Mom will agree with me. We've been told some of those things many times and it really, really, really gets our goat. This is a great list of things you should and shouldn't say to us, so pay attention!!!