2 heads are better than 1-Please support both heads!

Much hearty congratulatory wishes go out to SMARTER and the Institute of Medicine of UBD, for having successfully held the IM Charity Evening Concert at Jerudong Amphitheatre recently. I hope I can speak on behalf of all autism parents in Brunei that we really appreciate and applaud your efforts in not only increasing public awareness on autism in general but in particular, doing so in a manner that shows how special these children are, if only society gives them a chance by viewing them with an open mind and a big heart. InsyaAllah I hope this message can help gain more understanding (and eventually acceptance) from society so that they can learn to be more tolerable of autistic children and their differences instead of judging them purely on their atypical or “peculiar” behaviour. But more importantly, I also hope and pray it will help extinguish all of the unfortunate typecasts of children with autism to be mute, unsociable and “strange” and who will turn out to be nothing more than just a burden to their families and the community (yes, you’d be surprised to know that some people do think that!).

When I first tell people about Raiyan having autism and that he is currently undergoing one to one behavioural therapy, I am always asked why I don’t send him to SMARTER. For those of you who don’t know (and if you are in Brunei, shame on you if you don’t know of them), SMARTER is the pioneer non profit organisation in Brunei that deals with children with autism spectrum disorders. You can read more about them and their activities at http://smarterbrunei.org/ and http://smarterbrunei.multiply.com/.

Over the past years, they have organised 5 national conferences and countless charity events to help raise awareness on the disorder and also to generate funding to assist the children with autism in Brunei. Until Learning Ladders was set up, they were the ONLY body in Brunei to deal with children with autism.

As you know, the circumstances around Raiyan never called for the opportunity to go to SMARTER as CDC never diagnosed him as having autism. From this, you know that we only discovered Raiyan to have autism after being told by K, an applied behavioural analyst who we met through ISB. Since we met her first and were incredibly impressed with how well she understood Raiyan, we decided to go ahead with the therapy programme planned by her. We were also very keen to start the programme after being told of the progress of another boy who after 4 months, from not being able to talk could now answer the phone and talk in sentences. (We’ll have what he’s having!)

Just to show that we never discounted SMARTER from the start, we still thought of going there at the same time but were thereafter advised by K and a few other persons that SMARTER uses a different kind of therapy and to get the best results, the child should not undergo more than one type of therapy at one time.

Through K, we met a bunch of parents whose children are also her clients, and their children ranged between 3-6 years old. These parents are part of a new society called Learning Ladders whose main focus is to raise awareness on early diagnosis and early intervention for children with autism or other developmental delays. Seeing how all of us are lucky enough to catch the diagnosis early with our children (despite almost of all of us having been told otherwise by CDC) and how we are counting our blessings every day for the progress our children are making with the behavioural therapy programme they undergo with K, we can only wish and hope all other autism parents and especially those who are still uncertain about their children, share this invaluable experience, before it gets too late for their children.

Well until that happens, that’s where Learning Ladders can help. Since presently, there is no dependable avenue for you to obtain an official and formal diagnosis in Brunei, Learning Ladders sees the significance of such an action and that’s why we bring in the child psychologist from the Intervention Services for Autism and other Developmental Delays (ISADD) from Perth, Australia every 4 months in a year.

I hope by now I have managed to put across the importance of early diagnosis and early intervention through my blog, especially by sharing Raiyan’s weekly progress with this behavioural therapy. If you agree that all children with autism and those potentially having autism is entitled to this chance, then we wholly and deeply, from the bottom of our hearts, request for as much support as we can to help these children get this opportunity.

As you know from this post, the diagnosis by ISADD is quite expensive and the costs of the therapy are equally costly too and naturally not all parents in Brunei will be able to afford it. For this reason, Learning Ladders welcome any donations, however small, to help subsidise the costs of the diagnosis and the one to one therapy as much as we can to help enable these parents get the early diagnosis and give the ABA therapy a try for their child.

The funds can also be used to purchase more resources such as books on autism and all the tools, equipment and resources used by the therapists and also for the private use of the parents to share. The more resources we buy, the more there are to go around for all the children. When we have more equipment and tools, the children are given more options to learn from during their sessions. Not only will this help prevent them from getting bored (children with autism needs to be entertained with new things as often as possible otherwise they quickly lose interest. When they lose interest, that’s when their typical autism traits resurface), but it will also help prevent the children from getting attached to the items if it is given to them more than a few times.

Just how we utterly appreciate all the support you have given to SMARTER in the past, we are now hoping that the same empathy you have offered them can be equally rendered to our society. Just as how you understand that the children that go to SMARTER deserves the best care they can possibly get at their age, then you could also understand the importance of the younger children deserving a chance to improve their quality of life so that one day they can achieve some level of independence.

As another society that deals with autism related issues, the last thing we want to be seen as is as a rival or replacement to SMARTER. We only have the utmost respect for SMARTER and for all the hard work they have done all these years. Without them, there would be no understanding on autism in Brunei and all children with autism would just be looked down upon and ridiculed for their different character.

But when you look at it realistically, with the rising rates of children with autism now, it’s not reasonable to expect SMARTER to be the ONLY body expected to take care of ALL of these children and soon, adults. Our society is only trying to relieve the future burdens of SMARTER by insyaAllah, reducing the numbers that go to them so that they can continue to focus on the ones that really need their assistance.

Let’s all work together to achieve each of our objectives whether it is to get an early diagnosis and start early intervention for a young child or looking after the welfare of the older children and adults with autism, because in the end, we share the common dream to better the lives of everyone involved.