Chapter 10

Big Question….What happens after us?

We were either running away from this question or had no time to think about it!
How will she live…where… with whom…when we are not around?
Suggestions started pouring in! At present, our daughter was quite settled in school and we had faith that she will be coping and learning better with time.

The most sensible thought seemed to be ‘what if she had a sibling?’ Parents senior to us who had two children felt that another child brought normalcy to the family. This normalcy brought in energy to fight better as the struggle of bringing up a special child was here to stay in different forms…..
We parents need happiness, fun and a life just not around the special child but otherwise. Looking at the world with perspective of having another child brings in more positivity and joy, this equips us further….

For the next 2-3 years, life was steady with my daughter getting regular inputs in school and at home. She was progressing well in academics and cocurricular activities but slower in terms of language development. We started teaching her how to express various emotions in different ways. In annual functions she began to perform well with her loving buddies who gave her physical and verbal prompts on stage. From school she participated in spelling contests which were organized for specially abled children from different organizations. She bagged the first prize for three consecutive years! Thus, the school did its best to channelise her talents.

We planned a holiday to Chennai and met a very senior Autism specialist to reassure ourselves if we are on right track and if we could do something more/different for our daughter! She asked us to expose her to a variety of situations to learn the social skills better and we were already doing it! Ma’am suggested that we break a task and an instruction into simpler steps for better processing and implementation. To my surprise, I was already doing that as a result of the learning through my experience of teaching her different skills!

One fine afternoon we were pleasantly surprised to learn that God has finally decided to bless Medha with a sister or a brother! It was initially quite overwhelming and it took us a while to actually believe it. Keeping my daughter’s activities, therapies and well being in mind, we had to now focus on this new project. We had read that there was a possibility of having another sibling born in Autism spectrum….this was very scary. It started causing stress in me, which was not good for my mental health. I read an article in Reader’s Digest “To keep yourself sorted, note down what is in your hands and what is not!”

Que sera sera…whatever will be will be…