 Richard was a gorgeous baby and seemed to follow in his brother’s
footsteps. He passed all his health checks, just like James, and had all
his injections including his MMR at 15 months.
It is hard to say
when we first noticed Richard had changed. He had started
to learn all the usual baby words and then one day you just
seemed to notice he had stopped. There was one particular
Sunday when we had a house full of friends with their children,
and Richard’s godfather suddenly looked over at him
and said, ‘look at my boy, he’s totally oblivious
to all the chaos around him.’ And he was. I watched
him sitting watching a Thomas the Tank Engine video on TV
and he was in his own little world. I think a bomb could have
gone off and he wouldn’t have noticed.
At first we thought it was his hearing and we went down the road of attending
various clinics. When Richard was nearly two we saw one consultant who
said he had glue ear and he had gromits fitted.
It was the health
visitor who paid us a visit one day and was worried about
Richard’s speech delay. She used the phrase ‘autistic
tendencies’ and suggested we see a GP. Before seeing
the doctor I made a list of Richard’s difficulties.
The GP was kind, admitted he was no expert and said he’d
refer us to someone else. When I got home I remember looking
up ‘autism’ in a reference book for the first
time. And there it was – all the behaviour and difficulties
that I had listed for the GP.
The specialist spent two hours at our home asking questions and noting
the answers. He didn’t pay much attention to Richard. And Richard
took little notice of him. At the end he simply said, ‘I think
your son is autistic, but I imagine like most parents at this stage you
will know everything there is to know about autism. I’m sure there’s
nothing I can tell you.’
But we didn’t know. We had expected him to say it was the glue ear
and that we shouldn’t worry. The doctor looked awkward when he
left. We were totally devastated.
Even then we were
not convinced. We saw a second doctor who offered the same
diagnosis. Then we started to read every book on autism we
could lay our hands on. It made scary reading.
I never stopped loving Richard but I disliked him on a regular basis.
I grieved for the child I thought he had been. I grieved that Adam didn’t
have the brother he would have wanted. I grieved for the son who would
not do all those son things you see fathers and sons doing. I grieved
for the independent life Richard would never have.
We both cried on and off that next year. Friends and family supported
us as best they could but Richard’s condition is not an endearing
one and people were awkward with it.
It was the doctor who told us about Face 2 Face. At first I wouldn’t
have been ready to call them. It took me several weeks just to get used
to the idea – I think we were all in denial. I don’t know
what changed but one day I just picked up the phone and a few days later
was meeting Shirley, a local mum who had been through it too. Her story
was not exactly the same, but I could see she understood what we were
going through.
These things take time, and having a friendly understanding person alongside
you helps no end. It helped my wife and me go through it together – it
made us feel like a team.
Richard is now six. Still as crazy as ever but he is happy and has made
progress. We’ve all made progress in fact. We don’t care
if people stare at our family. We can laugh now too – which was
far too painful to do in the early days. It is rare for me to feel sad
about Richard these days. We always wanted a big family and we’re
now applying to adopt. Our theory is if we can handle Richard we can
handle anything!
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