Mums with autistic kids are never taught how to ‘break the ice’

Ann H - 26 Jan 16

Is it possible that people with autism are still locked away? I simply couldn’t imagine being parted from my children or them being hidden from society because they happen to be autistic. This is undoubtedly what used to happen as reported in The Daily Telegraph this Saturday by Kate Chisholm whilst reviewing ‘In a Different Key’ by John Donvan and Caren Zucker.

As I read the review I was, as I have been many times, so relieved to be living in a time and country where my children are not taken to state-run institutions where they will be pumped full of various narcotics in an attempt to ‘normalise’ or placate their behaviour.

One of the keys parts of the review focused on the blame put on mothers for their children being autistic. According to the review, an article in Times Magazine in April 1948 ran an article that suggested these (my) ‘frosted children’ became so because their ‘refrigerator mothers’ failed to bond with them. I suspect it is simply that the mothers were never given the tools to break through the ice.

I remember having a feeling of disappointment after my first son had his first speech and language therapy session. The hadn’t done or said anything? In fact all the therapist seemed to do was show me specific ways of playing with my darling boy. As if I didn’t spend all day sometimes trying to play with him. She had pointed out a few things she was doing and gave notes to me on them afterwards.

Of course I realised that I was being given strategies to do therapy at home. It was simple things like encouraging gap filling, encouraging requesting, encouraging eye contact and all just by changing the way I spoke and moved. Our second child needed more assistance in the form of my learning Makaton sign language and him using a picture exchange system to communicate. In both occasions, I was given the strategies and equipment to help my ‘frosted children’, indeed, I as given the tools to break the ice and help them access the world around them.

I’m so thankful that attitudes and ‘healthcare’ described were not frozen in time. Speech and language therapy along with many other types of therapy such as occupational therapy is not simply dispensed at an institution or health centre. Certainly for us, it’s a way of expanding my sons horizons and is delivered on a daily basis with a mother’s love and compassion. And when there is a breakthrough, the results simply melt my heart.

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Ann H

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