Mothers' network to help autistic children

Treat them equally in schools, hospitals

For mothers of these autistic children, the challenges of parenting are not any different. Barring communication and behavioural issues, their children go about their lives.

“One of the greatest problems we have in our society is lack of awareness about the condition. Even government officials and social workers are not so aware of autism and it has been a real struggle educating people around us,” said Sudha Krishnamurthy, mother of a five-year-old boy with autism.

The parents feel such lack of awareness spills into many aspects of lives for the children. “Education, for instance, remains a grave challenge,” said Priya Kannan, mother of eight-year-old Latika, who has been challenged with autism.

Autism, a developmental condition that varyingly affects communication and behavioural aspects of the children’s development, remains largely unknown to the mainstream society.

“Schools virtually shut their doors to our children, in spite of the fact that they can learn like other children with a little adjustment in the curriculum. There has been a lot of talk about inclusive education, but inclusion has not happened for the autistic children,” Sudha said.

Lack of awareness

With government regulation and wider efforts to spread awareness, the parents feel it can be changed. According to them, lack of inclusion does not stop with education.
“Our hospitals need to be more inclusive as well,” Priya said.

“Health workers need to be aware of autism and the need for care...”

“Government hospitals need to have screening mechanism for autism, which, in the last few decades has increased  20 times. Early diagnosis would pave the way for early intervention, which would minimise the impact of autism,” Sudha said.
Play to connect

However, the idea to use playing as a means of improving the social skills of the children brought the parents together nearly three years ago. “We brought our children to play at Cole’s Park and encouraged many other parents to do the same,” said Kavitha Krishnamoorthy, Managing Trustee of the moms’ network, Kilikili.

 “We then realised that the children needed support in social interaction, as many of them played individually and found it harder to interact with other children. So ten of us took professional help to build their social skills. In the last three years, we see a lot of improvement in them,” she said.

Social skills stressed

They celebrate festivals together and have annual programmes for the children, using the activities to improve the social skills “which is the main issue of their disability,” Kavitha said.

Without much social awareness and help from the government, the women have taken upon themselves to help their children find their feet in society.