ARTICLE 20. a SPECIAL CHILD is a SPECIAL BLESSING. PART 2

A SPECIAL CHILD IS A SPECIAL BLESSING
PART 2

There were bigger surprises in store for us when we discovered that *Evan was autistic.

The biggest one was the fact that there were so many of us! There are millions of families with special children with very challenging, special needs. I think of us as a chosen people who must live lives less than ordinary.

Remember that movie of Marlee Matlin? The movie Children of a Lesser God. It presents the concept of a god who supposedly created deaf-mutes like the character Matlin played. I had to kill that thought. I had to believe that the same God who made children beautiful is the same God who gave us Evan.

I had to remember that Evan is a beautiful child, a special gift we are privileged to have been given.

And thankfully, even then and mucvh more today, my whole family believes this, nay , embraces this the same way we have embraced Evan’s special-ness.

At the beginning though, you can’t imagine how alone you feel when faced with the reality of your autistic child’s situation. In counseling and support group meetings for autistic parents in the US, I remember how one facilitator tells parents that according to statistics , 70% of them will get divorced in 3 years (or was it more ? I forget.). It’s just that hard to take care of an autistic child, especially during the early years.

Some couples grow apart. Some families break down. But Evan became the glue of the stickiest, toughest variety---think industrial strength--- that bound our family together.

As soon as we found the right doctor for him, we were on course, still with my sister at the helm.

Placing him in a special school was first priority. But I must admit, the waiting list was long. And one school we chose for Evan was a mistake because we discovered that one teacher there laid a hand on him. Of course we pulled him out of there, and when we finally found the best school for him, we felt that a major thorn on our side had disappeared.

Special education teachers are a special breed. My texter friend Krineza, an incoming college freshman , who is determined to become one herself will belong to this especially blessed tribe of people. And like them, she will have some pretty unusual experiences.
She will discover that the most basic things a regular child can do is a monumental task for a special kid..

Even the gentlest, most inspired parents are just not equipped nor trained for taking care of a special child. They had to be trained themselves, for they had to follow through, like how my sister and brother in law did with what Evan’s SPED teachers were training him.

Evan’s school did him a lot of good. Speech therapy worked wonders for him. He was picking up skills and much of his behavior was being modified. Alongside with ours.

It was a really tough uphill climb. Before Evan started school, his unacceptable behavior included smelling people ‘s feet, eating only one kind of food, snapping his fingers all the time, jumping up and down even on ledges, (autistic children have no sense of fear), and so many others more serious then, but thankfully today are but memories.But we were all there all the time. We were his cheering squad, his 911, his number one fans. We wouldn’t have missed it for the world, especially since a lot of the memories we gained were not at all unpleasant.

I remember attending one birthday party in Evan’s school Evan’s classmates were also special, and I remember thinking that you would not find anywhere else a more supportive, more loving set of parents than the parents in Evan’s class. They wanted their kids to have everything regular kids experience, and obviously a birthday party is top on the list. But in this particular birthday party, all the guests, even the celebrant , were all crying. All were bawling their hearts out for they wouldn’t eat the birthday food. You see, autistic children are creatures of habit. They remember what they eat, when they eat it, and the universe can implode tomorrow for all they care, they will still have rice and tocino on Monday, rice and tinola on Tuesday, etc, etc, you get my drift. It was the same with these kids. They wanted their own baon. In the spirit of the occasion, the parents bent the rules a little. They gave in and allowed the kids to eat their own “baon.” Guess what, the kid’s “baon” were mainly hotdogs, the same food as the “handa”. But did a single child touch the hotdog prepared on the party table ? Nah.

Evan has come a long , long way from that child who wouldn’t touch any other food but his own baon of hotdog, from that child who had speech problems, no social skills,
who threw tantrums and wept when any little change disrupted his life.

Evan is no longer alone in his own little world.

For starters, Evan is in high school. He has been mainstreamed for some regular subjects, he has friends, he loves going to the movies with his dad (but he hasn’t lost his penchant for memorizing : he has committed to memory all the movies he’s seen, when he saw them, and where, and he has also memorized the schedule of HBO). He also has his own favorite food these days---and you can be sure it’s not just hotdog. His world is no longer as “shut” as as it was before. One fine day, my son who has always complained that Kuya Evan never plays with him, tried for the 1000th time to throw a ball at Evan, in an effort to make him catch it. That one fine day, Evan did catch it, and even threw it back, not just once but thrice! We’re playing Mom, my son shouted with glee, and that is one family milestone which gave us such joy.

Evan has also learned to express himself and his feelings. One time when we were visiting him, my son was especially rowdy, making a ruckus while Evan was doing his Filipino assignment. Evan got so exasperated that he wrote two sentences that were “pasalaysay”: “Si Anton ay malikot. Si Evan ay mabait.”

I could have added to that. Si Evan ay matalino. Si Evan ay mapagmahal. Si Evan ay mahal namin dahil siya ang aming special child na isang special blessing sa aming lahat.

I know that the parents and extended family of special kids need greater patience, strength and perseverance. We all need bigger hearts, we all need bigger minds.

A new friend, a texter named Ted Ruiz shared that having a child with special needs could really be a challenge. But in the end, you need only remember that though their bodies are physically challenged and their minds limited, these bodies are only temporary. Their souls are intact and will live forever. And that is one thing for sure that special kids, like my high functioning autistic nephew Evan, have in their corner. Their souls are pure. They are angels on earth. They are innocent little children forever.

Definitely, they are not children of a lesser God, but a greater one who knew exactly to which parents He should give them. It makes such awful good sense, one wonderful realization that makes you exult at how smart the One up there really is.

There can be no one else, and no one less…but special parents for special children.

BOOTS MA. GARCIA SISON IS A WIFE, MOTHER, DAUGHTER , SOCCER GROUPIE AND ADVERTISING CREATIVE DIRECTOR , MORE ON SOME DAYS THAN OTHERS. IT WAS HER TWELVE YEAR OLD SON WHO THOUGHT OF HER COLUMN’S NAME.

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