The First Time We Heard the Word Autism

"Does your son often cover his ears? He seems to be showing some signs of autism," the doctor said.

My immediate response was, "I don't think he has autism. He is so smart."

Looking back now, I realise how little I understood about autism at that time.

My son was two years old and had been having a temperature for almost a week, so we took him to the doctor. As soon as we entered the clinic, he became upset and started covering his ears. After the usual discussion about his flu-like symptoms, the doctor gently mentioned that he was showing some signs of autism.

I think the doctor understood from my reaction that I did not know much about autism. And he was right. Surprisingly, that was the first time I had really heard about it properly.

He said, "Why don't you go home, read a little about autism, monitor what he does, and we can talk about it again in another visit?"

When we got home, I started reading.

The more I read, the clearer things became. I started recognising many of the signs in my son. At that moment, we felt devastated. Not because of who our son was, but because we were scared, confused, and knew very little about autism.

We went back to the doctor, and he referred us to a paediatrician. After observing our son, the paediatrician said he was at high risk of autism and referred us to a diagnostic centre.

He also told us something very important: while we waited for the formal diagnosis, we could still apply for funding to access early intervention support.

We applied using the paediatrician's letter and a progress report from his daycare. Since he had not received a diagnosis yet, the daycare report played an important role in getting the application approved.

Once the funding was approved, we still had to wait around four months before we could access occupational therapy and speech therapy services.

At that stage, we felt very grateful that the doctor had noticed the signs and spoken to us about them. Because of that early conversation, we were able to start early intervention before our son was two and a half.

That was about five years ago.

Since then, we feel we have come a long way as a family. We actively participate in his therapy sessions, including OT, speech therapy, and physiotherapy. We also try to adapt the activities at home so they feel more fun and natural for him.

I will be sharing more about our journey, the therapies we tried, the small things that helped us, and the lessons we learned along the way.

I am not a medical professional. I am simply a parent sharing our family's experience. Every autistic child is different, but I hope our story helps another parent feel a little less alone.