Moving from Fear-based Parenting to Connection-based Parenting

Dear parents, I want you to observe your thoughts for a week. I want you to note down the thoughts that cross your mind regarding your child and yourself as a parent, and categorize these thoughts into two categories - positive thoughts and negative thoughts.

I, then, want you to analyze the negative thoughts that cross your mind and evaluate where they are coming from. Are they based in the past, the present, the future, or a combination of all three? Your thoughts could be coming from an unresolved past, a stressful present and/or an uncertain future.

I want you to divide your negative thoughts into three categories:

1. Negative thoughts that are based on your unresolved past.

2. Negative thoughts that are based on your stressful present.

3. Negative thoughts that are based on the uncertain future.

In Conversation with Asha about Her Journey and Special Needs

In conversation with Asha about her journey and special needs.

Tell us a little bit about yourself.

My name is Asha Sreedhar and my age is 34. I work as a Quality Associate at SAP Labs India Pvt. Ltd. through the Autism at Work Program.

 

What are your hobbies and interests?

My hobbies are:

• Reading novels and articles

• Watching Netflix Movies

• Listening to music

• Traveling

• Playing online computer games like Scrabble, Pictionary, Bingo, etc.

 

Behavioral Challenges in Autism

Many parents of children with autism are confused about which behaviors they need to address and which they don't, and become overwhelmed as a result. I am listing the most common behaviors observed in children with autism under two categories - behaviors that need to be addressed and behaviors that don’t need to be addressed.

Behaviors that put the child or others at risk need to be addressed. These include:

Medically challenging behaviors - food refusal, eating non-food items, splashing urine, smearing faeces, self-harming, walking on toes.

Physically challenging behaviors - hitting, biting, scratching, pinching, kicking, pulling hair, head-banging, throwing things.

In Conversation with Rashmi about Her Journey and Special Needs

In conversation with Rashmi about her journey and special needs.

Tell us a little bit about yourself.

My name is Rashmi Patil. I am 24 years old. I have done my Diploma in Nrityayog Sutra through YCMOU. I am a national level Bharatanatyam dancer and choreographer. I am also an art teacher and take workshops for children with special needs. I own an online handmade jewelry business called Rashmi’s Art since six years. My jewelry has travelled all over the world. I am also a make-up artist and am trying my luck in the field of modeling at present.

What are your hobbies and interests?

I love to travel. If not in person, I travel virtually with the help of Google. I like to read books. I enjoy watching memes and reels on social media. I love to watch drama and web series. The best time I spend is chatting with my mom and playing with my dog.

In Conversation with Aahan about His Journey and Special Needs

In conversation with Aahan about his journey and special needs.

Tell us a little bit about yourself.

My name is Aahan Patel and I am 22 years old. I am studying B.A. in English.

What are your hobbies and interests?

I like listening to music, dancing, drumming, playing video games, playing cricket, watching movies and doing social work.

What are your future goals?

I want to be better in listening and understanding English and be a good listener. I want to be a calm person and not get anxious unnecessarily.

In Conversation with Samiksha about Her Journey and Special Needs

In conversation with Samiksha about her journey and special needs.

Tell us a little bit about yourself.

My name is Samiksha Nair. I am 18 years old. I am currently doing Grade 12th from NIOS Board.

What are your hobbies and interests?

My hobbies are listening to music and watching movies. My favourite actor is Leonardo Di Caprio. I have watched many of his movies. My favourite movies are Titanic and Inception.

What are your dreams and goals? 

I wish to become an actor and act in Hollywood movies. I plan to do acting courses after my Grade 12.

In Conversation with Anandita about Her Journey and Special Needs

In conversation with Anandita about her journey and special needs.

Tell us a little bit about yourself.

My name is Anandita Kumar. I am 20 years old. I am studying Bachelor of Arts in Pune University and training to became a music therapist.

What are your hobbies and interests? 

My hobbies are playing drums, dancing and cooking.

Tell us a little bit about your journey.

My journey has been wonderful because of my parents, my sister and my teachers. They helped me a lot in my journey.

In Conversation with Aditya about His Journey and Special Needs

In conversation with Aditya about his journey and special needs.

Tell us a little bit about yourself.

I am Aditya Shah. I am 25 years old. I am working in the hospital as data entry officer and also look after the patients. I am the Munnabhai of my hospital.

What are your hobbies and interests?

My hobbies are dance, sports like cricket, football, billiards, swimming, etc. I participated in annual day function of Infant Jesus School in Shanmukanand Hall. I also participated in intra-school football competition, but our team lost in final. I like to do social service for needy people. During my journey as president and member of Leo Club and Lions Club, we did various projects to help visually blind people and mentally challenged children at MDC Home. I also like to buy new gadgets like mobiles, laptops, etc. from Amazon, Flipkart.

In Conversation with Viraj about His Journey and Special Needs

In conversation with Viraj about his journey and special needs.

Tell us a little bit about yourself.

I'm Viraj Bhat. I’m 33 years old. I'm a software professional working in Bengaluru.

What are your hobbies and interests?

I love watching informative and entertaining videos on the internet. I also enjoy writing down my thoughts.

How has your journey been so far?

Not an easy one. I had to go to school, and attend certain extracurricular activities against my will, due to pressure from my parents. And that hampered my learning process and self-esteem to some extent. And the teachers and classmates/schoolmates weren't so well-behaved or civilized.

In Conversation with Navneet about His Journey and Special Needs

In conversation with Navneet about his journey and special needs.

Tell us a little bit about yourself.

My name is Navneet Kulkarni. I am 17 years old. I am a day dreamer, a poet and author. Whatever I write, it’s my insight knowledge of my own imagination.

What are your hobbies and interests?

My hobbies are listed with so many interests. Like jellyfish glance in ocean, my hobbies dance in mind. I like to sing with humming, I love music, nurturing life by describing about nature in my words. Right now, my interest is showing synthesis in understanding human evolution.

Fear-based Parenting Vs. Connection-based Parenting

I would like parents to reflect on what drives their parenting style. Is it fear or connection? The answer to this question is the key to successful parenting!

Most of us are driven by fear when we start our special needs journey for obvious reasons - we are not sure what the future holds for our children and are worried that they may not have a fulfilling life, or our definition of a fulfilling life. So, we set out to work on teaching our children the skills that they are “lacking” in order to have a full life without considering their current needs and fulfilling them. This is the equivalent of trying to build a tower without a foundation - “trying” being the keyword here, because you can try all you want but you won’t succeed in building the tower without a foundation.

In Conversation with Rohan about His Journey and Special Needs

In conversation with Rohan about his journey and special needs.

Tell us a little bit about yourself.

My name is Rohan and I am 18 years old.

 

What are your interests?

My main interest is cars, especially supercars and Formula 1 Racing. My favorite supercars are the Ferraris and my favorite drivers are Sebastian Vettel and, now, Max Verstappen. I have a model car collection with 23 cars in it. I also like gaming, sports, and music.

 

How has your journey been so far? 

I have had a very good experience in my journey. My family and friends have always treated me well and given me a lot of support and encouragement.

 

Respecting My Son’s Individuality After His Diagnosis

It took me a while to realize that my son was not his diagnosis. Like many parents of newly-diagnosed children with autism, I worked relentlessly with my son after finding out that he had autism, thinking that it was only a matter of how much time and effort I put in for my son to be able to overcome his challenges.

Before I knew what was happening, I had turned my son into a project to be worked on instead of a child to be loved. It was only when the both of us ended up burnt out and miserable that I realized that this was not working. My sweet, cheerful, lively, bubbly, happy-go-lucky boy was no longer any of those things. He was sad, tired, frustrated, defeated and withdrawn. I was so mad at myself for having done this to him. I hated myself for losing sight of who my son was in the process of trying to get him to “fit” into society.

Handling Challenging Behavior

I strongly believe that behavior is communication. Challenging behavior is a symptom of a problem and not the problem itself, just like fever is a symptom of a problem and not the problem itself. You can control the fever by taking fever-reducing medication. However, to treat the fever, the doctor has to identify and address the root cause of the fever. Similarly, you can control challenging behavior in the short run by superficial methods like reward and punishment, but in order to rectify the behavior in the long run, you must identify the root cause of the behavior and address it.

Handling Sensory Meltdowns

We experience the world through our senses, namely, the sense of sight, sound, smell, taste and touch. What happens when these senses don't make sense? They distort the way you experience the world.

Sensory processing issues fall under two categories - hypersensitivity and hyposensitivity. Hypersensitivity causes sensory overload. Imagine experiencing everything much more intensely than you do: imagine the clothes rubbing against your skin feeling like your skin is being scraped by sandpaper, imagine people chatting with each other sounding like they are shouting through loudspeakers, imagine the lights in the room feeling like floodlights blinding your eyes. It would be torture. In fact, such methods ARE used as means of torture around the world.

Helping My Son Develop His Speech and Language

My son was non-verbal until the age of three and need-based verbal until the age of five. He is eighteen years old now, and speaks fluently. Here are ten things that we did to promote his speech based on doctor’s recommendations:

1. Exposing him to one language. Our mother tongue is Marathi but we chose English so that he could communicate outside the home as well. We spoke in English, read books in English, listened to songs in English, and watched English cartoons. We made it a point not to expose him to any other language while he was learning.

Helping My Son Manage His Emotions

My son used to have emotional meltdowns when he was younger. I realized that there were three things causing this:

1. Inability to recognize his feelings and emotions.

2. Inability to express his feelings and emotions.

3. Inability to manage or cope with his feelings and emotions.

Once I realized this, I began teaching him to identify, express, and manage his emotions. I taught him four emotions to begin with - happy, sad, angry and scared. I explained these emotions to him using words, pictures, and actions. I told him the name of the emotion, showed him pictures of faces expressing the emotion, and acted out the emotion in person. Once he learned the emotions, I showed him pictures of people's faces expressing different emotions and asked him to guess the emotion. We did this until he was able to identify the emotions on people's faces easily.

Helping My Son Communicate His Needs

When I set about teaching my son to communicate his needs, I realized that there were two distinct processes involved in communicating needs:

1. Recognizing the body's needs

2. Communicating these needs

Recognizing Needs

We experience the world through our senses. Sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell are the five basic senses. There are three additional senses that are recognised now, bringing the total number of senses to eight:

Dear Parent of The Newly-Diagnosed Child with Autism

Dear parent of the newly-diagnosed child with autism,

I know how you feel because I have been where you are. I know how lost, confused, scared and overwhelmed you might be. 

I cannot tell you that your child will be cured, because there is no cure for autism as of now. I cannot tell you that it will be an easy road, because it is not. I can tell you, though, that your child's condition will improve with a lot of hard work and patience. There will be ups and downs. There will be new concerns and challenges, but you will get the hang of dealing with them. You will become an expert in all things autism, but more than that, you will become an expert in your child. You will know how to help him and you will know how to teach him to help himself. Life will not be how you envisioned it to be but it will be a fulfilling life if you let it be.