Special Mom’s blog

One third of the month is over. 10th Day of Bloganuary prompt:

Has a book changed your life?

As a young girl, I loved reading books. My Dad got me English crime novels from his office library and I enjoyed them. My grandmother’s friend got us Tamil novels, more social ones and my friend got me romantic novels. So practically without enrolling myself in a library I read a lot.

1999 January we got our first computer and got internet connection. That is the same time around, my special one was getting himself diagnosed. The topic of my interest completely changed and my reading materials included just things about autism. I was into so many parent online groups and immersed myself with many non traditional autism treatments. I would see articles posted by various therapists on these forums and two of them caught my eyes and got me interested in purchasing those books. One book was by Dr. Kaplan, Seeing through new eyes and Tito Mukhopadhyaya’s book How can I talk if my lips don’t move?

Applied Behavior Analysis is the only course of treatment or therapy that has still be approved for autism. But by reading the above two books I found out how my son was an auditory learner and he had trouble using his eyes. We made number of visits to Dr. Kaplan after reading his book and learnt a lot about visual processing disorder and therapies that can be done to correct it. A trip to Austin to see Tito’s Mother Soma, showed me how he can learn with just auditory input. These two were game changers for my son. At the age of thirteen my son did his first jigsaw puzzle and started making baskets in a basketball court. He started spelling words and though he was considered a severely autistic child he started exhibiting his true potential. He did not get up one day to play the keyboard . It took so many hours of therapy and practice to get him there and I am really proud of him.

Internet has so many resources and I am happy I found what my son needs and I got the perfect books to help me. It is an overwhelming journey and continues to be.

I was not a science student and never had any interest in biology, but I had to read so much science to understand somethings to help my son.

As I finish this prompt, I have to reflect upon it. These books did not help me but helped my son😊. So maybe high time I start looking for books that can change my life!!!