Managing children with autism

While interacting with Dorcas in her classroom, it was obvious she was anxious to go home. Just then, her father appeared. She left the stranger and rushed to hug her father. Observing how Dorcas rushed to embrace her father, you can’t help but see the close-tie between the two. Dorcas, a pretty nine year old […]

While interacting with Dorcas in her classroom, it was obvious she was anxious to go home. Just then, her father appeared. She left the stranger and rushed to hug her father.
Observing how Dorcas rushed to embrace her father, you can’t help but see the close-tie between the two. Dorcas, a pretty nine year old girl, is autistic.
Now, imagine this, your nine years old child cannot communicate with you effectively. He or she is not able to do his or her routine chores without needing assistance, like eating, bathing, brushing etc. This is the plight of autistic children.
In a conversation with Mr Solomon Dauda, Dorcas’s father, he made this remark: “Dorcas is my first child. She is the closest to me out of all my children. I am emotionally attached to her. When I discovered she had this challenge, it broke my heart. And in all the books I have read, they say it is not curable. So, what do I do other than to look unto God?”
While narrating his ordeal to Weekly Trust, Mr Dauda says it has not been easy taking care of Dorcas. Hear him: “Generally, it has not been easy. You see everyone around you has a normal child, and you keep wondering why yours is different. You keep wondering how you can get her out of the condition she is in. You will discover she still has many habits you want to break. Apart from tapping and the hyperactivity, there are certain things she does not want to eat.”
Dauda says he almost suffered depression when he found out about his daughter’s ailment but for the help of God and The Zamarr Institute, Abuja.
“I almost went into depression. I felt so helpless. But God has been keeping me on and with the help from the school, The Zamarr Institute, it becomes easier to handle the situation. He struggles to cope with frequent embarrassments, though. He says, “I don’t visit people too often for the fear of what my daughter may do. When I visit people, I’m always on my toes; I don’t want her to break one thing or the other. I don’t want her to urinate on somebody’s couch, so I hardly visit. I only visit few family members in the city.”
But in all this, Dauda confesses his daughter has improved as a result of behavioural and communication skills she has learnt from the school. “When we brought her here, she was already above 5 years. She could hardly grab anything, not even spoon. She can’t wear her clothes, she can’t hold a straw. Now, she can wash her hands after using the toilet. If there is a meal she likes, she will eat. She likes plantain. She can eat plantain morning, afternoon and evening,” Dauda explains.
For Ronke Katagum, the Director and Proprietor of The Zamarr Institute, Abuja, her goal for establishing the school is to meet the needs of children with special needs such as autism, Down-syndrome, speech defects, amongst others.
This was her passionate remark: “Someone has to do it. Some of our children are getting lost in the cracks. Their needs are not being met. For instance, a child with learning difficulty in mainstream school who is being abused of being dumb and stupid will lose his self-esteem and we will probably lose the child. What we offer is such that children with learning disabilities can come here and benefit. What we offer is to teach in a way the child will learn.”
Dr Toju Chike-Obi is the consultant paediatrician, Tabitha Women’s Health Centre, Maitama, Abuja. She lets us in on what autism is and what the causes are. She explains, “Autism is a brain disorder of children. It is usually noticed between the ages of two and three years. It is the disorder that has no known cause. The cause is thought to be multi-factorial, which means there is a sort of a brain defect that we have not narrowed down yet.”
According to her, autism has three major symptoms. She enumerates them: “The three hallmarks of autism are abnormal communication often in speech and language. They communicate abnormally. The second is abnormal social interaction. They cannot relate socially with people in their environment. The third is that they have abnormal behaviours. So there are certain things you look at to help you make a diagnosis.”
Unlike other disease which you can detect after undergoing a blood test, experts say there is no blood test that can be done to detect autism. Chike-Obi puts it succinctly: “There is no blood test. It is not like malaria which you can test for. Autism is a diagnosis of evaluation. You evaluate the child to see if they fall into these three criteria. Then you make the diagnosis.”
She says there is no treatment for autism: “There is no medication to treat autism. The only time it is recommended that autistic children get medication is if there is an associated diagnosis of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). In that case you will give some certain stimulant treatment to the child to treat the ADHD. But for autism, there is no medical therapeutic intervention in terms of pharmacology.”
In Nigeria and Africa, many people attribute autism to witchcraft. But Dr Chike-Obi disagrees, saying, “We don’t have witchcraft in the US, yet one in 88 children are having autism of which boys are more likely than girls. It is not witchcraft and don’t believe that.”
On if an autistic child can grow up to live a normal life, Chike-Obi says this: “It depends on the level of autism. Again, if they are mildly autistic, they can get by with help. They can hold down simple jobs behind the scene. They can be filing Clarks, librarians, and such things.”