Learning While Teaching

     The main character of this story was born in 2001 and diagnosed autism when he is 2 years old in Turkey. i would like to tell his story because while he was growing I was with him and his family. We grew up all together. Till today we have learned quite well knowledge from him those don't write in books. His contribution to my professional development is invaluable. He has been accepted to a university. I think  his journey's best stop will be " architecture"

    FIRST STOP ???? " Diagnosis"

Thanks to his mother's attention and knowledge, it is understood that there is a difference at the age of 2 years. Talking about autism at such a young age was not a common situation in those years. at last when he is 2,5 years old his one to one  special education sessions began. 

no communication 

no verbal expression

no eye contact

no follow any directions 

However, he soon began to adapt to education and the "no"s slowly began to soften in time.

SECOND STOP ???? " Acceptance Process "

  Probably the hardest stop was for the family specially for mother to accept the diagnosis. while our main character's special education goes on an expert in special education was set counselling with the family.

In the literature, the process of accepting a diagnosis is very similar to the grieving process that a person experiences after losing a loved one.

* Shock         "No, this is not true " , " my son is not diagnosed with autism, he is only not speaking enough", 

* Denials        " I think there is a mistake", " if he is autism he wouldn't be able to walk, run,play in playground ......"

*Bargaining   " I didn't spend enough quality time with my son, we'll spend more time together from now on, everything will be fine"

*Guilt       "It was all because of me. When I was pregnant, I had very sad events. I gave birth to him and he grew up in my body because of me he became autistic"

*Anger   "Why did it come to me? I am a good person I love children I don't treat people badly then why ME?"

*Depression  Detachment from social life ;

                   Not to inform anyone about the situation

                   To explain the issue from the beginning and not to cause more pain

                   Search for a way out in anxiety

                   Feeling unhappy, not enjoying life

*Hope      " This is not the end of the world. I understood what needs to be done, now we are starting a new life."

This period varies family to family and culture to culture also some families live this period more than one year, some get ready to accept the diagnosis in in a short time such as 6 months. when the family have the power to accept the situation it is a milestone, a new life began  for the family and for our main character. 

THIRD STOP ???? " Education"

Studies have started in line with a very intense and concentrated training program. In a short time, family education studies accelerated because now the mother was mentally strong enough to fulfill the assigned tasks.time goes by and now it was time to start pre school education. what does it mean? he has to separate from mother and needs to get used to the new environment, peers, teachers. This was a painful experience for him, he failed to communicate with peers.  actually his one to one education program was unbelievable. Recently, his learning rate has increased a lot and he has started to learn concepts with less repetition, even he can store new information and never forget it. we thought that he will be able to show his all abilities at school,  in a short while we realized how wrong we were ☺ 

During 18 years he always surprised us.     From the age of 5, we have seen that they have conceptual skills at the level of their age, but social skills are so backward that we cannot progress. in year 1 he learned writing and reading but his behavior problems became unbearable for his friends and teacher. I remember that every monday morning I attented meetings with his teacher at school ( what should we do at home, in education centre, at school to prove his social skills ). One day when he was Year 2 he came back home in tears, barely stopped crying and hardly said " i need friends, i want to play with them but how?"  It seems to be a quite hard experience but after that day he began to make effort to have friends. 

" No matter what you do when working with a child, he is never ready for some things until he is mature enough " This was my first lesson by my lovely student  ???? 

FOURTH STOP ???? " CORRECTLY predicting a child's potential "

In years we have realised that he has some abilities like drawing. He was drawing houses. Drawings of "indoor"  .Additional to indoor drawing he has been obssesed with chimneys . 

 

"I never thought that an obsession could affect the development of such a well-to-do child so negatively" this could be the second lesson for me 

There was a regression from the chimney obsession as a result of long struggles, then we were very happy to see his real potential, the hero of our story had turned into a young man who was mentally developing rapidly and socially.

FIFTH STOP ????   Awareness 

Awareness of a child diagnosed with autism is quite valuable for us but this time awareness of him dragged us through a difficult process. He discovered that he is different from peers and began to investigate the reason, we gave him a book about autism to as a present. 

A short while later we have talked about autism with him. this was a unique experience for all of us.

SIXTH STOP ????   learning how to cope with the problems 

Now that he knows the reason for the difficulties he is experiencing, he has begun to accept our support more easily in order to cope with the problems that arise. this was the other milestone for each. 
obsessions, adolescence, difficult lessons, growing up, friendship relations, exams, it was not easy to deal with all these. I am sure he did his best like a warrior. Of course, there were times when he had to take medication support. 

SEVENTH STOP ????  nowadays 

Now he is a student in a University, his inspiring journey goes on, his aim is to be an Architect  ❣