Make an updated professional profile on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, and add or follow every major researcher, self-advocate or autism educator that you keep hearing or reading about in your media feeds. Social media allows us to connect directly with international experts; even if you don’t ask them a direct question, follow their posts and read what they are saying as you will be learning for free from experts.

Attend autism training workshops, conferences and lectures in your city and country as much as you are able to. Invite other like-minded parents and educators and make sure you share and give a presentation to your local autism network if you have had attended a conference or a lecture from an expert from outside our region or country. When we share and teach, we learn and master technical subjects, which give us the vocabulary needed to be effective self-advocates for ourselves and those that we are supporting.

Encourage hobbies and specialised interests, these lead to fun pastime activities, mastery and eventually vocational careers based on tangential skills. Hobbies allow subjects of social connectivity and a common topic to share and exchange with others.

What should you be doing if you are a parent of an autistic child?

Conversation can be taught, so can social interaction, if done step by step and through practice and adequate research (such as watching conversation in comedy programmes, to study humour).

Eye contact can be improved by looking at your own eyes in the mirror and practicing three to four line summary descriptions about who you are, what you do, and your interests and hobbies. This practice leads to confidence when introducing yourself to a stranger or in a social setting.

Having adult supervision is positive reinforcement for learning social interaction, particularly in our south Asian environment with elder grandparents, cousins, siblings and hired help. Employees and helpers can be trained to support inclusion and facilitate communication inside the home. However, decision making and a semblance of independent choice is important to inculcate, starting by choosing what food to eat leading to choice of schedules, activities as well as hobbies.

I had pets at home, aquarium fish, parrots, cats and even some rarer animals (crabs, snails and turtles picked up from the beach, and the occasional goat). Understanding animal behaviour enabled me to form explanatory models for my interaction with people. Taking care of animals allowed me to understand rules, routines and work with sensory issues (smell).

I would recommend children and adults on the spectrum to observe animals in real life as well as through video.

I learnt a lot from computer games that allowed me to explore, take risks and have conversations with virtual characters. Limiting computer or game time is important due to inherent addiction that may arise over time. Tablets and technology are very good to facilitate communication. I highly recommend taking educational training to make animations, games and creative projects by using these tools as they are a great opportunity for vocational futures.

You are not alone, there are millions of parents and educators and self-advocates that will find out about Autism in the coming years, just as millions of us exist around the world, celebrating United Nations World Autism Awareness Day each year on April 2.

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, April 5th, 2015

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