They Might Be Curly Giants!

A therapist(s)/teacher(s) from a speech therapy centre here has been accused of physically harming an autistic boy after his parents found bruises on him following his speech therapy class.

The parents of an eight-year-old autistic boy went to the police when they found their son bruised following a speech therapy class last Friday.

When his mother picked him up from the centre in Orchard Road, she saw bruises and scratches on his arms, back and neck.

Infuriated, she confronted the centre’s principal. What she learnt stunned her.

She told The Straits Times at the family’s home in Kovan on Monday: ‘She told me that my son was violent and that her staff have to deal with this at every session.’

The 41-year-old accounts manager added: ‘He would usually only lie on the floor and kick when he doesn’t get what he wants.’

She and her husband, a 43-year-old sales manager, took the boy to KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital that evening for a check-up. They also made a report at the police post there.

The police confirmed that a report was filed and they were looking into the matter.

The boy, diagnosed with autism at age two, is in Primary 2 at an autism-specific school here.

(Taken from the Straits Times)

These allegations, if found to be true, would be very sad indeed. All toddlers and young children have their moments and kicking or lashing out during a tantrum isn’t anything out of the ordinary, but here’s this autistic boy, who obviously has issues in communication, throws a tantrum in class, complete with kicking and screaming which autistic kids are prone to doing, and the result is bruises and scratches on his body?

I do hope for the centre’s sake it was somehow self-inflicted and not the case of a teacher overwhelmed by a student’s physical nature of expressing himself, abusing him in order to control the boy in class.

I’ve had my fair share of hits, kicks, slaps and scratches from Ajab when he has a tantrum. When I try to calm him down by making him face me and listen, he would either slap my face or scratch my cheeks. The reason he does that, I suppose, is to make me stop talking because he either does not want to listen to my explanation or he perceives my talking to be scolding and wants me to stop immediately.

Then there is the classic rolling about on the floor which we have to be careful about, because not only do we not want him to get hurt, we also have to be wary of his legs and arms thrashing about. A couple of times when I tried to pick him off the floor, I’d get a kick from him. Ajab’s teachers advise that during these times, we leave him alone for a while until he cools down and picks himself off the floor. But of course there are times when we don’t have the luxury of waiting, like when we have somewhere to go to and we’re late, for example.

There are times when I felt like retaliating when the stress levels go through the roof during his tantrums, and I’ve fallen into that trap where I’ve hit him, but never would I leave a mark on my son who’s only trying to tell me that he doesn’t want to do something we tell him.

We don’t subscribe to the Straits Times at home and I didn’t get the copy of yesterday’s edition, so I don’t really know the outcome of the boy who was bruised after his speech therapy. Whatever it is, the lesson here is that autistic kids will stretch you to your limits when they have their off-days and you just feel like the whole world is against you, but sometimes we just have to take a deep breath, say a little prayer and get on with life. He’ll calm down eventually, despite us being hit by a tantrum-throwing boy.

It is painful. It hurts. But that’s just life with autism.