Mother reminds the community of the challenges families with autistic children face

Pauline Tuendele, from Turffontein, faces various day-to-day challenges as a single mother with an autistic child. Her eldest son, Joshua Mawete (17), has autism.

Tuendele has described one of her biggest hurdles as frustrating and extremely difficult. The challenge she refers to is communicating with her son. She is unable to have any type of verbal communication with him. Therefore, her son will try and communicate through photos or gestures.

Unfortunately, this method to communicate is not always successful and it often leads to a lot of frustration for mother and son. This also makes it very difficult for Tuendele to understand her son and, more importantly, understand his needs.

Tuendele has also said that she often struggles to understand why her son is autistic or why did it happen to their family.

“I often ask myself, why me? Why should my child be autistic?”

One of the biggest challenges she has noticed is the community. Tuendele said the community is not educated about autism and they do not understand what is wrong with her son. A lot of times community members have labelled Joshua as ill-disciplined or even crazy. Some members of the community have even said that Tuendele is a witch and they have asked her: “What have you eaten during pregnancy to create such a monster?”

Parents with autistic children do not always get a lot of support. This especially rings true for Tuendele as she is a foreigner from the Democratic Republic of Congo. This means that she receives zero support or assistance from the government.

She does, however, have a social support group. This is a group of parents with autistic children who support one other. This especially helps parents who have struggled to adapt to a new lifestyle with an autistic child in the house.

Tuendele said: “The support group helps a lot as it is a group of people with a common problem or challenge, now they have the platform to join hands and work through it together. This is also important as parents with older autistic children are able to help newer parents as they have a better understanding of how to deal with young autistic children.”

Tuendele’s wish is for people to be more educated, informed and understanding of autism and what it entails.

“This can be achieved if people participate in dialogue on social media, television programmes and radio,” she said.

Therefore, it is important to host awareness campaigns so that communities can be informed. After awareness, acceptance should follow suit. Just being aware of autism is not enough and communities should accept and support such families as well.

Most common symptoms in autistic children

Developmental learning delays

• Does not understand simple instructions.

• Does not want to play with other children or toys.

Overly sensitive to sensory stimuli

• Become overwhelmed with stimuli such as lights, sound, taste and touch.

Difficulty with communication skills

• Social development is delayed and the child usually do not make eye contact and struggle to communicate verbally.

Repetitive movements and behaviour

• Repeating certain movements and behaviours, such as purposely shaking the head, a leg or arm, making intentional facial expressions, or pulling hair may be signs of autism.
Source: Appliedbehavioranalysisprograms.com