The importance of education for people with autism

It’s World's Autism Awareness Day, this year being marked under the theme Autism and Humanity – Every Life Has Value. I have a lot to say today, and it’s not a pity party. Just a candid discussion and opening up like this is a sheer act of bravery. You might have to read this in installments, go out for a coffee or smoke break and return when it suits you😉. A million pages wouldn’t cover everything in my head and heart, but I'm going to primarily address the issue of education for children/people with autism, but I will digress a lot. I always do. My superpower is my ability to tell 10 or more stories in one. First of all, I'm not one of those mothers that sugarcoat the challenges that autism brings and say "God gives special children to special people" or "Autism is Awesome". I’ve had people that ask, “Waida kuti zviitirwe ani (If not you, then who)?”, “God knows your heart, He doesn’t give you burdens that you can’t carry.” Given half a chance, I really wouldn’t opt to take one for the team, no, thank you sirs and ma’ams. I’d totally rewrite the whole script. While we’re here, please don’t say any of the above to anyone with a medical condition, or has lost a loved one, or whose child has special needs. Those are very insensitive and thoughtless things to say. There’s nothing glamorous whatsoever about autism. It's a horrible, horrible condition that shouldn't afflict anyone. It robs people of the joy of parenting, a real thief of joy. There are people who believe every person with autism is a whizz at Maths, music, art or other things. The reality is actually quite different. It's a debilitating condition, not only for individuals that have it, but also for the parents and carers, especially mothers. When you have a child with autism, the right way to express oneself would be “we have autism” because it pervades all facets of your life. It affects how you parent, socialise, plan your life, sometimes even what you eat as a family, everything. Often when I’m trying to be supportive of Victor or listen to his endless stories, Rudairo waves two fingers in the air✌🏾 , and that’s not the peace sign. It’s her reminding me that I have two children and should listen to her stories too. But I feel that Victor, despite being the older child, needs more attention and I waited four years before hearing him speak, so I have to listen. It’s very hard to strike a balance sometimes, so you have to keep checking yourself and in the process you spread yourself too thin. In very unfortunate circumstances, many mothers have to quit their careers so that they can be full-time caregivers to their children on the spectrum who nobody else can handle. It’s almost always the mothers that have to make huge sacrifices, many fathers just run for the hills to avoid the discomfort. Back to the topic, many children (who then grow into adults) are denied the opportunity to get an education. This could be because of an unsupportive system or families that just don’t see the value of taking them to school. Some families even hide their children with autism or keep them locked up because they are either ashamed or have no clue how to handle the meltdowns that worsen in public. The cruel remarks worsen what’s already a very difficult situation. With so little knowledge on the condition, some schools expel pupils whose issues they can't manage. The perceived misbehaviour is usually an indictment on parenting skills, and it becomes easier for parents to just avoid social settings altogether to avoid getting judged for something they have no control over. Help is available to manage the meltdowns, aggression and other behavioural problems in the form of therapy and medication. At some point I used to be very much against medicating people on the spectrum, but learned to accept that it really is a means to an end. If it’s the only way to ensure your child or loved one can function socially, manage anxiety, hyperactivity or severe behavioural issues and be able to take instruction at home and at school, then why not? Diabetics, asthmatics, and haemophiliacs get medication to help manage their conditions. It’s the same concept. Education is important, even for people with autism, especially for people with autism. It gives structure to their lives and for lack of a better phrase, whips them into line by ensuring they have a set pattern to their lives. Most of them actually thrive in structured environments that schools provide, not chaos, uncertainty or being forced to be hermits that never go anywhere. Despite being differently wired, they have the same needs as everybody else. They need self-actualisation, whatever that looks like to them. Many that get the right kind of support excel in their trades of choice and become contributing members of society, one way or the other. It's heartbreaking when some families write off their children simply because they don't function in a way that society regards as normal. Denying them a chance to flourish is robbing them of their future. Charity begins at home; so if you write off your own child, what chance do they stand out there in the marauding world? When you write off your child, you inadvertently teach people how you want them treated. You need to be prepared to go to war for your child, and I’ve fought quite a few, and have a few more in the tank. Victor knows I’m his fighter. When someone mistreats him, he knows he has to tell me, and after telling me, he asks, “Are you going to deal with them?” And I say yes, and I do address the problem, not like the textbook mad black woman. You can still handle business calmly and decisively. Not all battles have to start with a war cry or the haka, but they still need to be fought. Among the many things I’ve learned in my journey with autism is that although I’m generally a soft person, I need thick skin like a rhinoceros and an inner gangster always lurking in the shadows so that I can stand ten toes down on business when I have to. The world isn’t always kind to softies. You can’t simultaneously be an autism parent and a wilting flower. You need tenacity, you need willpower and you need the grace of God. Back to education, when we relocated to Eswatini, Victor seemed to be accompanying other pupils to school as there was no evidence that he was learning anything. In his own time, he mastered how to type, play games and navigate his and other people's laptops. He started reading for comprehension, something I'd thought would never happen. At one point, his late former teacher Gwen told me I needed to accept that he couldn’t read and stop buying him so many books, but I was unrelenting. Sadly she didn’t live long enough for me to tell her that because of Victor, Rudairo was able to read and spell well ahead of her peers because he always read to her and obliged when she asked him to spell for her.

But try as we did, he just wouldn't write. I was OK with that and was satisfied with him typing. Afterall, no one writes anymore these days. Even at the bank you don't really need to sign with a pen. When we returned to South Africa and placed him at a new school, his teacher Carol insisted that he write. I told her I preferred that he carry his laptop to school so that they could hone what he was already good at, not force him to do what he struggled with and magnify his challenges, making him feel inadequate. She insisted he wouldn't bring his laptop to school because she intended to make him write. I was really upset, but because I didn't have too many options lining up for me in the way of school, I decided to tuck my little tail neatly between my legs and allowed her to bully us by forcing him to write. He did learn, and is still learning to write legibly. Some people struggle to read his hieroglyphics, but I can actually decipher very easily because I'm his mom. His ability to type and write have given me a window into his innermost thoughts. During the COVID-19 lockdown he wrote pages and pages on his frustrations with President Ramaphosa changing goal posts regarding the opening of schools. And when holidays approach, he types several pages about his plans to visit his grandparents in Rusape. Now that he has his own phone, I suspect my close relatives want to crucify me upside down for giving him their phone numbers because he bombards them with calls and messages, even at the most inopportune times. He wouldn’t be able to do all that without going to school. He would not have an outlet, because confining him at home would have denied him that. His social skills, which were appalling before, have improved by leaps and bounds because he gets to meet other people daily and keeps learning how to carry himself in public spaces. It’s been well over a decade since he took medication for meltdowns because they’re completely gone, not a single sign that they ever existed. The one moment I felt grateful for Carol's decision to force him to write, that the insistence was in divine order, was when Victor got lost, it will be four years in five days. A kind mom called the police when they couldn't understand each other. Even though he can communicate, on that day he was scared and overwhelmed, and that got in the way of him adequately using his words. The police tried to ask for information from him, but he likely thought he had been arrested and was scared that I'd be angry, so he refused to give them the details, while I was busy losing my mind imagining all manner of horrors that could have befalled him. And the right to remain silent is protected by the constitution, so he probably was exercising it. The police just fed him and let him hog their heater on that cold night, not sure what to do with him. Eventually, around 2am - 14 hours after last contact - he found a pen and paper in the police station and wrote my name and address. The bewildered officers couldn't quite make out what he wrote so they asked him to read it out loud. He did. That's how they came to get me at home where I was sitting up crying my eyes out. He wouldn’t have written if he had been denied the opportunity to go to school. That's my sermon this World Autism Awareness Day. The results take long or aren't even visible, but trust me, it counts to send children on the spectrum, including the non-verbal, to school and allow them to socialise. Not all who wander are lost, as the saying goes. When you least expect it, the results of going to school will rear their beautiful head. Our children have their own place under the sun and shouldn't be treated like the planet's stepchildren. They should be in environments that allow them to flourish, not regress, they should be seen and heard, they matter. If they should fail to achieve anything in life, may that not be because they were denied a chance and someone in their life chose not to try. It can be disheartening to pay school fees for a child that doesn’t show evidence of learning anything, but pay anyway. It’s not a favour taking them to school, they’re entitled to it. They have a challenging condition as things stand, they don't also have to be illiterate. They will grow up to be adults and can't always be sheltered at home. They'd need tools for survival, be able to read, participate in social activities, transact at stores, work even. For those that believe, Ecclesiastes 9:11 says “I have seen something else under the sun: The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all. So never say never. This morning Victor told me that he dreamt he had left our house and was moving into his own apartment. I don't rule out the possibility of that happening. Everyone, regardless of their standing in society, has a measure of God’s grace. Thank you for reading 🙏🏾🤍.