Teaching children with autism takes bouts of patience

He was a peaceful child, chubby, loveable and never sought any kind of attention. He never cried for anyone to lift or play with him. There was nothing peculiar about Christopher Komo. He sat, crawled and walked at the right time. However, at one year and eight months, he had limited speech. His vocabulary was made up of only three words i.e. yokya, come in and ne touché pas. He never said mummy or daddy.

“People wondered why he delayed in speech but it did not bother me because one of my cousins began speaking at seven years. I was hopeful that Komo would speak given time,” Elizabeth Kaleeba, Komo’s mother said. 

At two years, Komo’s grand-mother suspected him to be autistic. He had no interest in other children, preferred to be alone, threw tantrums and had several behavioural problems.

“I did not give it much thought until he was four. I began my journey of acceptance and after carrying out lots of research on the internet, many things fell into place,” Kaleeba recalls.

Then the doctors confirmed that he was autistic. He only said ‘good morning mummy’ when he was 12 years old. He is currently 14 years of age. His words come and go and he is very sensitive to noise.

 

When Komo gets upset:

When he was first taken to school, Komo was extremely aggressive. He broke a window and beat up other children. A child at the school often got nightmares of blood and it was later discovered that he was beaten by Komo. His mother says it was a challenge going with him in public places because he would throw tantrums.

When he gets upset, he undresses and stays stark naked regardless of where he is. Kaleeba confesses to moving with leaflets on autism which she distributes to people in case her son throws tantrums and has to explain to staring people.

Kaleeba’s worries as a mother:

Although she would have loved Komo to grow and become independent, with autism, he is never going to be that. Whether he will be able to attract girls of his age is one of the many fears gnawing at the strands of her heart.

“There are times when he draws pictures of a man and woman kissing and I wonder what goes on in his mind. Recently, he picked a flower and gave it to a girl and I kept wondering how he is going to deal with these urges,” Kaleeba reminisces.

Also, he has issues with bathing if the water is cold and so, he turns on the shower and lets it run and if unsupervised, he will not bathe.

Autism facts:

Autism is neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by a triad of impairments meaning that each individual experiences varying degrees of impairment in social interaction, communication, and ritualistic behaviour or rigid thought processes. 

“The symptoms of autism can occur by themselves or in combination with other conditions such as blindness, mental retardation, deafness and epilepsy,” Owino says.

According to Prof James Tumwine a paediatrician specializing in child health at the College of Health Sciences-Makerere University, autistic children display characteristics such as: poor social interaction often preferring to be a lone, often non-verbal, have particular obsessions like that for water or grass, laugh un-ceremoniously, indicate need by gesturing, avoid eye contact, their interaction is often one-sided preffering to be about themselves and they have no real fear of danger. 

They are described as being "locked in their own world." 

“The most frustrating thing about autism is that there is no cure and standard approach or one way to treat and connect with someone who has the condition,” Prof Tumwine says.

Challenges of teaching autistic children:

According to Kaleeba, the social stigma our society attaches to autistic children is so much so that there are no schools for them. 

“It is still hard to find schools that will allow interaction between autistic and non-autistic children because the latter will always be rejected,” she says.

While living in Switzerland, Komo attended nursery school but instead of going to class with the other children, he preferred to sit in the school’s compound. Never in his two years did he enter a classroom.

Emmanuel Kalanda, an occupational therapist at Mulago Hospital says the greatest challenge in autism education is that of lack of knowledge among school teachers.

“Instead of handling each individual personally, they tend to treat them like the others and even force them to do things the others do hoping they’ll eventually grow out of it,” Kalanda says.

There is also general confusion about autism. Teachers do not realise, for example, that the challenging behaviour can be accompanied by high intelligence. Although it dawned on Kaleeba that her son will never be academic, she has no disappoints as he has turned out to be gadgets lover and can quickly correct a problem with phones, cameras or computers.

“Teachers need to understand that children like these achieve milestones through different ways like Enoch who can now speak Luganda fluently despite being addressed in English,” Kaleeba, the Founder and Coordinator of the Komo Centre in Entebbe says. 

She adds that autistic pupils make the most progress when teachers provided an individualised programme that addresses specific social, personal and learning difficulties. Owing to this fact, the Centre comprised of nine autistic children out of 30 pupils teaches independent skills like numbers, laying beds, doing dishes and washing clothes among others.

Kaleeba says the centre has an Individual Education Plan for each pupil involving their parents which starts with an observation period for three months. The social life and interests of the child are studied in this time. 

This is followed by physical education that goes on from six months to one year where the child is taught mass skills for example how to use instruments, beading, pottery and making cards some of which will help them earn a living in future.

Komo’s good progress:

After six months of rigorous training of teaching him how to brush his teeth, Komo now knows how to do it. He can wear his clothes and even match them with different shoes although he won’t wear long sleeved shirts or trousers. 

“He knows how to make his bed and clean every nook and cranny of his room and I hope this habit stays with him to the end-he is extremely clean and observant about hygiene,” Kaleeba says.

He is also a good swimmer, a skill he learnt through observation, navigates the TV channels to watch his favourite cartoons and loves communicating with his grandmother on phone although it is just, ‘Nana, it’s me Komo.’

ninsiima@observer.ug