Who Can I Call?

Autism, Family 02 Jul 2010

As Salaam Alaykum wa Rahmatullahi wa Barakatuhu,

Dhuha’s mood can change in an instant, with hardly a breath between her manic laughter and her screeching cry or she can remain locked in a particular emotion long past, what could be considered, normal. I can never guess what her mood will be like at any given moment. Therefore, we send her to school everyday regardless of how she is in the morning.

Sometimes, we get it wrong and Dhuha gets even more distressed at school and I have to do an early pickup. Clearly, there is no blame on the school. It can be hard to look after her when she gets upset for long periods. Even more so, I would imagine, when you are also looking after 30 other children. I, sometimes, feel like falling apart when I have a baby that needs attention and an UPSET Dudu, who also needs attention.

When she’s in bed, with all her apparent needs fulfilled, screaming for what feels like a month, who can I call? Without Allah, I’d fall over.

I testify to the fact that there is no god worthy of worship except Allah, the Peerless. And I testify to the fact that Muhammad is His slave and messenger.

Dhuha

About the author

Abdullah

I am Abu Sabah Abdullah Al-Amreeki, a revert to Islam from Christianity, a husband to my beautiful wife, a father to my amazing children, an aspiring daiee and a wannabe Web developer.

2 Comments

Stranded
July 4, 2010 at 10:15 pm

Assalam Alekum,

School seems like an appropriate choice of place to send most 5 or 6 year olds, but only because they are developmentally 5 or 6 years old. When your brain is lacking the neuroconnectivity needed to make sense of this world, then your needs are different than a regular kid. I call on Allah, I beseech Him. I also feel that my decisions for Khaled are made possible by the will of Allah and the people in his life, helping him are there because Allah has helped me find them and brought us here.

Please brother, I do not intimately know your child, but just the fact that our children have autism means that as a parent we need to make special and different effort to understand them than our NT kids.

There are books written by Beth Glasberg and one by Robert Scrhamm that I found useful in understanding some of the possible functions of Khaled’s behaviors.
There are numerous other texts…but these stand out in my mind. Once you understand the reason/function for something you can do something about it to help the child.

Also the RDI that we do, gives us tools and ways to assess behavior of the child and OUR behavior as well, and how to change those to make the child’s life better.

I have considered other treatments, and talked to the consultants of those treatments (like son-rise, and floor time etc) and the only two that appeal to my common sense and logic were behavior therapy (expensive and need to hire therapits) and RDI (parents do themselves, cheaper but hard to find good consultant).

You can find a list of UK RDI consultants here http://www.rdiconnect.com/pages/find-a-consultant.aspx

We see ours every week, but I know families who see one every month also because thats all they can afford or the consultant lives too far.

Inshallah our efforts to help our children will not be in vain. Khaled will not be going to school this year.

Reply
Abdullah
July 21, 2010 at 7:10 pm

As Salaam Alaykum wa Rahmatullahi wa Barakatuhu,

I completely understand where your coming from, with regards to school and how best to treat our children.

However, Dhuha thrives in school. Watching and playing with normal developing kids has helped her tremendously. She now makes a larger range of sounds and even uses some words semi-regularly. She has recognised her written name. She makes eye contact with kids and adults. She now even allows other children to play with and along side of her. Many of those improvements have also carried over from home and she is slowly losing the habits she gained when we sent her to the specialist nursery. Alhamdulillah.

That’s not to say school is the only method we use to treat Dhuha’s condition but it is a very important part of her overall treatment. I remain very positive about her schooling and I’m looking forward to next year, InshaAllah.

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