Download or read book Autism Spectrum Disorder Demystified written by Faith Ndhlovu and published by . This book was released on 2019-03-22 with total page 65 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: I first heard about Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) from a dear family friend of ours. Their first child was autistic and so I intensely listened to their story about having an autistic child. My initial impressions of the disease were that it was some kind of mental retardation. When I met the young autistic boy, I noticed that he spoke very little and interacted with strangers for a very short period of time. There was little for me to process as he could leave the room a few minutes after we had settled down to talk with the parents. He interacted very little and made very minimal eye contact. The only response he would verbalize was to acknowledge the greeting and get away from the visitors as quickly as he could. I was surprised that amongst all his siblings, he was the one who would burst out crying during house play instead of the younger ones. The behavior was almost foreign to my understanding. Yet our friends kept talking about their autistic boy and how he had improved and how proud they were of him.Little did I know that one day I will be blessed with an autistic child. My baby boy Tanaka was born on a wonderful Sunday evening. He hardly cried when he was born. I marveled at this quiet, beautiful baby boy. I thanked my Lord for having blessed me with such a beautiful child. When I looked into his eyes, I saw the purest of eyes as white as snow. The complexion was perfect; the outlook was impeccable. I thanked my God every day for having blessed me with such a beautiful child.However, when our son was six months old, I began to notice some behavior which I found rather odd. He was overly sensitive to fluctuating sounds. For instance, he would cry every time we were having family conversations and someone burst out laughing. I wondered why laughter made my son cry so much. I thought laughter should make everyone happy so it all didn't make sense to me at the time. I noticed that any change in the pitch of voice of those around him would make him cry. He was also particularly over sensitive to sound and light. I noticed how he would get interested and gaze at some lights especially if they were of different colors and how he'd stay fixated on them. This was rather odd but I brushed it aside thinking it probably meant nothing. By the time he was 12 months old, my son was not saying a single word. Most of our advisers alluded to the fact that he possibly had a tongue tie and that we should take him to the hospital to be examined. There was a part of me that wanted to believe that it was just a tongue tie. After all, if that was the issue, then all we needed was to just take him for surgery and once the operation was done, he would begin speaking. Our initial thoughts as a family were that it was a speech problem.We decided to take him to a medical practitioner to determine whether he was suffering from a tongue tie or perhaps something more serious. Upon examining him, the medical practitioner informed us that he was most likely autistic. I received the news with disbelief and a hard heart. I went home and broke the news to my husband who in disbelief said that the doctor must have been mistaken. Being the man and trying not to worry everyone, he said it was most likely a tongue tie and that we shouldn't worry about it too much.The months that followed were pretty tough because we were holding on to any glimmer of hope that would convince us otherwise. We were still trying to convince ourselves that this was a passing phase and that all would be well. We all dreamt of that day when we would wake up and our son would be talking and socializing normally. Every little bit of verbal or social development was exciting to us. Everything our son said was like music to our ears. I couldn't get enough of his speaking. Even a single word was enough to send me into a moment of joy and happiness. Everything he did was amusing. What a gift and an amazing child this was.