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Jason Chan, a retired counsellor, an ordinary human being, decided to share his extraordinary life experience. He is one of my dearest friends, whom I have known for decades, and is a person that I admire.

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A Rather Different World

CHAPTER 17    -   Knowing Autism

 

January 15, 2025

My first knowledge of autism came from a tutorial class in year three in university. A film in English was shown to the class regarding an autistic boy before entering school. He, his elder brother and both young parents lived in a city in North America. The boy was with an able body and normal mobility, and was very cute. However he fell behind kids of his age in learning and self-care. He loved toy trains, cars and mechanical stuff. He was always by himself, or rocked continuously on a wooden horse, or swung his head back and forth while sitting when feeling frustrated or bored. He cried and made noise, but almost never talked to others. He always avoided eye contacts. The parents finally sought help from professionals. The story ended much better than in the real world. With endless effort, the boy progressed significantly. In the last scenario the boy grew up to be a teenager asking his mom the reasons for the strange behavior of another autistic boy.

 

The instructor also shared a family story of her nephew who was also autistic and studied in kindergarten. People needed to be with him long enough to know him better. To me, this syndrome was very special and sounded strange to me.

 

After graduation from social work I worked in the field of youth and family counseling and had served a few families with autistic children. They had to put in a few times more effort in discipline and care only. There was a trajectory that a young mother ended the lives of her autistic boy and herself under extreme frustration.

 

With experiences and contacts with autism, I understood the harsh challenges faced by those families. I started worrying if Lun had some kind of in-born challenges while waiting for him to walk and talk. Words of comfort came to us from families and friends that boys grew slower. 

 

Lun landed in Canada before age two and started going to daycare at three. We were asked by the centre to answer and return a simple form. After that a community nurse followed up with us by conducting an in class observation for Lun. An interview was arranged with us to raise their concerns over Lun. As revealed by the preliminary observation report, Lun fell behind his classmates significantly in self-care, naturally we blamed ourselves for over caring Lun which delayed his self care development.

 

In fact, the reality was much harder to take. We, three of us, were already walking on a very different life path. 
 

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