Striking Out at Things We Don't Understand
With working parents and grandparents that already have their hands full, the routine was to send Keet to the childcare centre each day.
My wife tends to be harsh towards the kid's discipline. Whenever her sisters started comparing how good their children behaved in the house, it added to her frusrations. Due to Keet's Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) he tends to be more active compared to the rest of the kids. The impulse to punish Keet does flash across her mind from time to time, but I glad to say that we have both agreed to always resist the impulse and to always decide how to handle things together.
It is a difficult journey for parents to accept the hard truths and come to terms with their autistic child. All parents wants their children to be bright and intelligent. All parents wants their child to get ahead and be better than their peers. That’s the reason why lots of children goes for tutorial classes after school and extra curriculum activities during the weekends.
Parent like us, only have a modest goal of wanting our child to fit in with other children. Its ironic that while most people try hard and even pretend to be unique to gain attention and be better than anyone else. Families with autistic children only wish for them to learn how to be normal in order to interact and be accepted by others. Parenting, to us had a new meaning.
There was once an incident when my wife saw Keet’s pre-school teacher slapped him in front of the other students and threw his pajama on his face, pushing him to the floor. Immediately she dashed into the classroom, pushed the teacher away. She cried bitterly and questioned the teacher what her son did to deserve this kind of punishment.
What's even mor shocking was discovering that innocent Keet had been physically abused during the 2 years in the Childcare Centre by his teacher for not able to speak or performed any tasks that were given to him.
That explained why Keet was anxious whenever his mother brought him to the Childcare Centre every morning. Reflecting upon the Keet was immediately pulled out from the school. Starting from that day onwards, she started to learn how to love Keet the way he is with all her heart by not comparing him to other children.