One star, one world.
A flower is a world, and an autistic child is also a world.
For autism, I still know some flashes through the movie "Ocean Paradise" that reflects children's autism, the protagonist of the article is an autistic patient, not good at communicating with people, adhering to a fixed life model, no basic self-care ability, Jet Li played by the father all his energy is spent on teaching Dafu to improve self-care ability.
Autistic children, known as star children, twinkle alone in their own world, distant but familiar.
On April 2, the 15th "World Autism Awareness Day", I did some homework through the Internet to interview the autism training center founded by Teacher Liu Mingming.
Before the festival, I came to the Starfish Rehabilitation Training Center for Children with Autism at No. 683, Huicheng East Courtyard, South Tiandi, East Section of Shenyang Road, Zhumadian Economic Development Zone, just in time for their group play class.
An adult pulled a child around the classroom, and at first glance, the children who were in class looked nothing out of the ordinary: they all looked healthy, their eyebrows were clear, and some of them were answering the teacher's questions loudly.
I couldn't help but ask the rehabilitation teacher at the Starfish Center, "I don't see what's wrong with them?" The teacher replied, "If you stay a little longer, you will find out." ”
Came to a one-on-one training class, "Little hands are put away, awesome!" "What are the numbers in the middle of 5 and 3?" ”......
In a cubicle, a child sits opposite a rehabilitation teacher, doing a project, "Take out the yellow banana", "The bear is holding a red umbrella"... The teachers are training the children repeatedly, attentively and patiently.
I still found that many of the children here did not make eye contact with people, as described in the materials I consulted, and I shouted that they did not pay attention to me, and did not make eye contact. I greeted a little boy whose mother was holding her hand and stroked his head: "Hello! And he walked over as if I were unconscious, as if I were transparent air.
"Children of the Stars" has a poetic name, but the life of "Star Children" is trapped in their own sky, unable to communicate normally with others, trapped in a lonely world, a kind of distant world, which makes people pity.
Teacher Liu Mingming, founder of starfish rehabilitation training center for children with autism, asked me, do you know why they are called "children of stars"?
She went on to say that when people describe the sun, they will say that he is as enthusiastic as fire, when they talk about the moon, they will say that he is cold as frost, but when they talk about the stars, they will say that he is lonely and arrogant, because the stars shining in the night sky are incompatible with the surrounding environment, and they look distant and strange. Therefore, autistic children are often called "star children".
At this moment, a sudden hysterical cry came out of the classroom. Teacher Liu Mingming said that autistic children are often accompanied by speech development retardation or non-development, language comprehension is impaired to varying degrees, and children often cry or scream to express their discomfort or need; Xing'er will not express it, but they still long for our understanding, attention and respect.
During the interview, the words of a star mother deeply stung me: "I would rather my son be physically disabled than autistic, so that at least he can communicate with us normally, stereotyped abnormal behavior, often disturb others, it is difficult to make society tolerant ah..."
From the teacher of the Starfish Autism Children's Rehabilitation Center, I learned that the horror of autism lies in: some children are normal before the age of three, no different from ordinary children, shouting to parents, some in the numbers, memory or music ability is even extraordinary, but after the age of three, there is a sudden large-scale rapid degradation of language, social and other abilities. Therefore, whether the child has autism, most of them are found and diagnosed after the child is three years old, and once the child is found to have this disease that has so far been unknown and incurable, the life trajectory of a family has been completely changed.
Liu Mingming introduced that autism is a congenital neuropathy, there are three types of core symptoms: social communication disorders, narrow interests and stereotyped behavior; if young children often have repeated jumping, placing their hands in front of their eyes to gaze, fluttering or often tiptoe walking and other stereotypical repetitive actions and strange behaviors, and the name does not respond, the parents do not have attachment, parents must be careful, to take the child to check.
She said that the current autism data on the mainland is a bit amazing, China has exceeded 10 million people with autism spectrum disorders, including more than 2 million children under 12 years old, and now, one in every 54 newborns has autism.
Starfish Autism Children Rehabilitation Training Center was founded in September 2008, is led by the founder Dr. Liu Mingming, donated by social caring people, Zhumadian earlier began autism rehabilitation intervention professional institutions, is committed to providing professional assessment and personalized rehabilitation training for children with autism spectrum disorders, for more than ten years, more than 1,000 children have successfully entered normal kindergartens, giving special children a blue sky, achieving Starfish's remarkable teaching and training effect and good parent reputation.
Teacher Liu Mingming introduced that while serving the two districts and nine counties of Zhumadian, starfish center has also been recognized by parents of autistic children in Nanjing, Shenzhen and Taiwan who are trapped in Zhumadian due to the epidemic, which is comparable to the professional intervention training technology in first-tier cities, which is deeply unexpected by them. In a fourth-tier city, there is such a professional intervention agency for children with autism, which is also unexpected to me.
The sooner the treatment intervention for autism, the better, and I saw that parents and teachers at starfish centers were racing against the clock, language classrooms, individual training classrooms, sensory integration classrooms, group classrooms, shouting, urging, vocal and methodical, and they were fighting to pull the children of the stars back from the closed world back to the world of ordinary people.
In the classroom, the teacher is concentrating on teaching the children, and behind each child stands a parent, holding a notebook, recording the content of the teacher's speech, and going back to the child to repeatedly strengthen.
The teacher of the Starfish Center said that in 2021, the Starfish Center overcame difficulties such as the epidemic and went against the wind, in order to make it more convenient for the families of autistic children to work and live, reduce the rush of parents on the road, in order to facilitate parents and children to attend classes nearby, the Starfish Center has now set up two schools in the north and south; in 2021, the Starfish Center was invited to join the National Autism Health Education Alliance, undertook the autism social research project of Zhengzhou Shengda College of Economics and Trade, and also completed the inspection of joining the Family Education Committee of the Henan Family Development Research Association. It was once again evaluated by the public welfare practice site of Henan Traditional Education Research Institute.
The "children of the stars" all live in their own world, and it is extremely difficult for outsiders to enter and communicate with them.
Fortunately, we have such a group of people in Zhumadian, who not only want to enter the hearts of autistic children, but also hold their hands to understand the world, these people are Dr. Liu Mingming, the founder of Starfish Autism Rehabilitation Center, and her special education team, who are gradually integrating autistic children into mainstream society after thousands of repeated trainings with love and patience and care.
Today's field visit, into the world of stars, let me have a comprehensive understanding of autism, if not here, really face the stars of the child, I can hardly imagine the above mentioned mother's evaluation of her child, how painful and difficult it should be in real life, in order to let her say the above words.
April 2, 2022 is the 15th World Autism Awareness Day, I hope that more and more people in the society will pay attention to autism and care for families with children with autism! Autism not only caused great harm to the patient himself, but also brought great pressure to his entire family and even his family: heavy financial burden, hard study, daily life care, etc., the degree of hardship is far beyond the usual family, although the society pays more and more attention to autistic children, but there is still a long way to go from the desire of autistic children to get lifelong care, autism is a project that the whole society needs to work hard to bail out!
Accept the children who care for the stars, and may the world be gentle. (Text / Wu Xiangyu)