Ok. So there we were, on our way to the psychologist. I was cool. Only threw up three times on a three km journey, but I was cool. Wanted to curl up with my baby and fade into infinity but I WAS COOL. You get the idea. My first question to the psychologist was will he grow up and get married. Both the husband and the doc looked at me like I was the nutcase, but really, what I meant was will he live a meaningful life. Would he be cured? It took months before I could accept that he cannot be cured. He can only be taught coping mechanisms.

Net net, we figured out our son had PDD – NOS (Pervasive Developmental Disorder No Obvious Symptoms). Basically PDD covers an entire umbrella of neurological problems a child could have right from Autism, Aspergers, Dyslexia, ADHD etc etc. In Munnabhais lingo these are wiring lochhas where bipolar, schizophrenia etc are chemical lochhas. When a kid shows symptoms but does not clinically fit into any category the diagnosis is PDD –NOS. Alarmingly, seems that incidence of PDD-NOS has increased manifold in the last 10 years, its even termed an epidemic by American medical associations.

Well that was the diagnosis. From there on we started therapy. Began with visits to the psychologist. Then we added on a special educator and then an occupational therapist. My sons schedule probably is more packed than most kids, but he thrives on it. And he’s blossomed. Its an expensive affair, but I consider it the best investment I have made.
We’ve stumbled our way through the last few years learning some very basic lessons. Sharing them here in the hope it’ll help someone…

Mommy is always right – trust your instincts. If a mom says something’s not ok, the chances are she cud be right. And hey, one might as well err on the side of caution. I thought I was a neurotic mom but that led me to see problems in my kid where others believed none existed. We could begin early intervention and nothing, but nothing can substitute for helping a kid in time.

Choose your therapist carefully – western psychology believes in treating patients like ‘cases’ with a degree of detachment. I don’t know how that works with adults, but kids – NO WAY. My son works with therapists who love him. There are hugs and kisses and tough hard work, but he knows they adore him. And he has blossomed under them. In fact the only therapist he ever reacted badly to was this ‘detached’ lady. Needless to say, it didn’t last too long.

Choose a school wisely and be open with them– choose a school that wants your child not one that YOU want. I’d put my son in this ICSE school, not told them anything about any issues he has. Was not too sure how they’d react you see. In retrospect that was unwise. Soon, I realized that he did not understand too much of what was happening in school as there was no personalized attention -the teachers had no clue he needed it. My fault and he was paying. So we asked for a meeting… and yeah, I threw up on my way there too!!! Know what? It went off beautifully. The teachers were so supportive once they knew what they were dealing with. Open house is a joy today. My son brims over with confidence, loves school.

Be informed and participative – Read, ask questions, and be aware. Understand what you’re dealing with and participate in therapy. It helps you deal with your child, their behavior, quirks as well as figure out what a therapist is doing, how its gonna help, whether they’re really helping etc etc. As I’d earlier mentioned, we were working with a PDD – NOS diagnosis. Recently I read about this condition called Hyperlexia. Its little known as compared to Dyslexia, but it sounded like my son to the T. it was like a load off, just knowing what I’m dealing with here. I’m part of an online hyperlexia parent support group and have been immensely supported by them, gotten lots of hints/help on things I can do.

To tell or not to tell – that really is the question. Some parents believe that by telling other people their own kid will be ostracized/laughed at/limited so they don’t do so. Fair enough. But if the reason really is a sense of shame, experts say the child will pick on it with debilitating results. For us, we talk about our son pretty openly. I want him to grow up feeling absolutely ok with who he is. My biggest joy would be when he says, ‘x has short sight, y is anemic, z is a pain in the ass and yeah I’m hyperlexic – so?’.

Pride in your little one –We are so proud of our baby. He’s done more in his little life towards dealing with his problems than any one of us has in all our years. He is surrounded by family and friends who believe he’s an amazing little fellow. So, unlike poor ishaan of tare zameen par, my guy thinks he’s the resident stud. Isn’t that a better way to feel?

Hope, belief and conviction – i know, sounds like a sales pitch for Hallmark, but hey, as corny as it sounds, positivity keeps you going. Cling to despair and you sink like a rock. Hope keeps you afloat and you’ll never know when it transforms to belief that your child will be well and that belief strengthens to absolute conviction.

Visualize – at the depth of my depression I’d keep visualizing my son as a grown man on stage and me clapping away proudly looking on… about a month back, my boy was selected to perform in his school concert (20 kids from 160 – yippee). There I was sitting in the audience howling away, complete Kodak moment, when it hit me. Shit! My visualization happened… so visualize a future that’s bright and beautiful and life will lead you that way.

Reach out – this ones for all my family and friends. I’ve lost count of the times they’ve put me together when I’m coming apart. Do reach out. Its amazing how people you love can fuel you on.

Take time out for you – this ones pretty self explanatory. Methinks all moms deserve this so yeah go out n pamper yourselves n let the men do the ‘khaana-susu-potty’ bit one day.

Circa 2008
Our son turned 5 on the 7th of June 2008. He is a brat but an absolute sweetheart. Brilliant with computers, he logs on to the net, goes to his favorite gaming sites and plays – all on his own. We played, ‘make sentences’ recently. Gave him the word ‘pretty’. His answer, ‘all the girls are pretty’. Now more than ever we are sure he’s OK.

Being a mom is life altering; no wonder tradition calls it a rebirth of sorts. But being mom to a kid with any kind of LD (learning disability), now that’s a roller coaster ride to hell and back. The toughest part of this journey, for me, has not been all the assessments, therapy or the work needed to bring up my boy. Its been the journey I’ve needed to take within my own head. Moving from saying, “my baby is not normal, therefore he’s abnormal” to finally reaching a point where I can say, “my kid is not ordinary, therefore he is extraordinary”. This has been my trip…..
Rewind to August 2002. Married for about 2 years. Holidaying in Mauritius. Started drinking on the flight to and stopped on the flight back. One never-ending party. And one slip up. No fears, I mean, hey, only in Eastmancolour hindi films do women get knocked up after ek pal ki bhool. But what do you know, we were gonna be parents. And, surprises never end, we were thrilled to boot. Our son happened with alarming ease…well….if one could discount 18 hours of labor. But whattheheck!!! He was worth all of it n more. All the expected problems happened….. colds and loosies and pukes. All of it stressed us out, but we were ‘prepared’. Funny how life screws our best laid beliefs.

A few things about my son did seem unnerving very early on, we just kept justifying things and saying ‘baccha hai’. He was obsessed with fans, circling objects. He’d wave his arms about. Today I know the term used is ‘hand flapping’ but boss, it just seemed like an excited wave then. Well, we are an excitable family. He’d not respond when we called him at times….we assumed he was a focused little fellow, couldn’t be distracted. Not like his mom you know. By the time he was 18 months or so he could recognize all the letters of the alphabet. A couple of months more and he knew his numbers and plenty of colours. Well, most smart kids do right? But what was weird was that most of it he picked up on his own, watching some DVD. Soon he could recognize flags of about 40 odd countries. Same DVD. What seemed odd was a kid who showed a lot of intelligence should have developed in an ‘all round’ manner. But here was my son, he’d learn 10 new words a day, but had no idea how to string them together and make sense. He’d repeat every thing said to him, entire phrases in the same cadence/tone it was said, but seem unable to use them in conversation. Technically websites said two word sentences were enough. Well, he formed 5 or 10 word sentences but they made no sense. Ex: me – baby, do you want biscuits? He – do you want biscuits? (vigorously nodding or shaking his head in denial). He could not even use yes or no. Incidentally this kind of repetitive conversation is called ‘echolalia’.
He turned two and we left to join my husband on ship. I’ve always believed life gives us signals about directions we need to look at, paths we must go on, but we tend to ignore them. All the ‘educated’ officers on board found our boy so endearing. His hand waving was a source of much laughter, but no one thought it was odd. One day this ‘uneducated’ crewman came up to me and said, “maam this thing your son does with his hands, have you shown it to any doc?” man, did I bristle at his impertinence. I mean hey, what could he know. he said, “maam im only telling you as my son has just recovered from stomach cancer and what we thought was regular indigestion was cancer…”. Signal 1. Soon after that we got a Readers Digest on board which listed possible symptoms of autism. My boy fitted a lot. Signal 2.

We got home and spoke to our pediatrician. Read up on the net. If anyone’s interested, go through the DSM IV criteria for autism. One thing that seemed clear after reading up was that he was not Autistic, but there were definitely issues. Finally, we made an appointment with the psychologist and took him for what was going to be our first step towards his future…