My Experiences with the children suffering from Autism

Akshara Initiative and NEUCRIN
Born from their tears.


I have many experiences with the children suffering from Autism and also their parents and sisters.


I'm going to list out the major ones that had an impact on the working of Akshara Initiative and also those which will have an impact on you.


> Somewhere in 2011.


There was an event in our college where students from many other colleges came. As I used to do in those days, I was giving the brochures of Akshara Initiative to all the students. One girl came to me and asked me about the details of how Akshara Initiative works. I explained everything to her and she seemed completely interested. After I finished explaining to her, I asked her if she knows anyone suffering from Autism because she seemed to be so interested. This is the reply she gave in her exact words.


"I had a sister. Her name was Nikhitha. She was six years old. She had Cerebral Palsy (If you wish to know what is Cerebral Palsy, please refer to the end of the home page). We went to different doctors in Hyderabad, Kurnool, Bangalore and Mumbai. We showed to some eight to ten doctors and they all did some tests and some of them said that she had some mental problem and some said that they can't understand what is that and only some could say that she might be suffering from Autism or Cerebral Palsy or any of the other symptoms of ASD. After one and a half year, she died."


She was literally crying standing in the college among everyone. I can't say what and how I felt. That was the nearest I could get to a parent or a sister of a child with these disabilities and the experience was definitely, as you all can see, extreme. That made me work more and faster on the project NEUCRIN.


> Somewhere in 2012.


I went to a school specialized in dealing with these type of mental problems nearer to the railway station in secunderabad. I went with two other friends. We asked for the permission and were allowed to sit on in a therapy class for the children suffering from Autism.


There was this one little boy who was crawling on the floor all over the room. He goes under the tables, he goes into the cupboards, he goes under the chairs. Their teacher said that he won't stop doing this and that he does this all the day.


There was this another one little boy who was clicking his fingers. He did that continuously for two hours. May be he stopped for just a minute or two in between.


There was this another one little girl who was crying. She would have cried for one hour and forty or fifty minutes in those two hours. She wasn't stopping crying at all.


The top person of the class was a little canadian-indian boy. His teacher asked him to shake his hands. He came forward and gave to shake his hands and there were black large bubbles starting from his palm and fingers and to ending at his wrists and elbows. When we asked what are they, the teacher said that he used to bite his own hands and sometimes the others' hands. He used to bite them again and again and sometimes even after six months to one year of the therapy.


While coming out of that school, I saw a little girl there. She might be around four or five years of age. Her therapist was there with her and also her mother was there with her. Before the child were laid several photographs of her parents and friends and relatives and she was unable to recognize any of them, not atleast one of them all. Her mother was crying and tears were swirling with in in her eyes.


These experiences were the extreme and these made Akshara Initiative.