When children become adults

Or more specifically, what happens when autistic children become adults. This is something that us parents will probably agonize on for the rest of our lives.

There is Gabby who was misdiagnosed for years and had to go through school from elementary to high school to college, and then work for years only to get dismissed, before he was correctly diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrom, a form of high-functioning autism. At 46, he has photographic memory, can draw a portrait in less than five minutes, but dreads parties and finds falling in love and telling jokes perplexing.

There is also Mikki who at 22 dances with arms flapping and swinging left and right whenever and whereever she hears bouncy music, drawing stares and sneers from our fellow Filipinos. When she becomes aware of these stares, she throws a tantrum, beats her head and bites the back of her hands which is now heavily scarred. This unkind attention pains her mother who tells us that in Switzerland, where they lived for 14 years, people left Mikki alone, apparently aware of her condition.

There is Gabe, now 20, a library science college student at the Centro Escolar University who was talking in sentences as early as 2 years old but started talking less and less and diagnosed with autism at 3. He then went to a diagnostic program, had therapy sessions, and went to a regular public school in the United States where they lived. Her father said his condition forced them to stay there longer in the US because they realized that the Philippines is 50 years behind in teaching kids with autism and other disabilities.

And there is Francis, a 17 year old with autism, who got away from his mother Aling Ruby at SM Megamall and tried to go into a movie theater showing a Harry Potter film only to get bullied by the cinema security for trying to get in without paying. He was turned over to the mall security who kicked him out of the mall. He drifted for 15 hours around the area while his mother went crazy looking for him.

Despite his condition and all other obstacles, our goal is for our child to be independent and for him to reach his full potential. Already we are seeing good signs. But we are aware that this can very well be a lifelong battle for us, a battle in the sense that there is very little help and understanding out there from Philippine society.