My article: A Mother's Wish for My Autistic Son

Dear everyone:

I am pleased to announce the launch of A Mother's Wish Blog with my first article: "A Mother's Wish for My Autistic Son" (http://www.awakeningminds.sg/amw/blog/index.html). 

My blog articles will revolve around A Mother's Wish (AMW) that subsidises and runs diverse activities for individuals with moderate to severe autism during the June and December holidays. It is our dream to do so all-year-round. I will also write about my homeschooling journey of Sebastien, my moderately autistic teenager (18 years old) — my ongoing inspiration for starting AMW.

By sharing these musings, I hope to spur families, interested individuals, and policymakers to take action on the lack of services and opportunities for moderately to severely autistic individuals (particularly youths and adults) in Singapore, whether through AMW or not. AMW is my endeavour to do my part and empower others, instead of waiting helplessly for change to come.

Here is an excerpt:

...with the 18^th birthday of Sebastien, my autistic son, looming on the horizon — the age that heralded the "official" entry into young adulthood, I felt a desperate urgency to incorporate part-time work into his homeschooling programme in order to thrust Sebastien further into the outside world. Yet a round of phone calls to special needs organisations in Singapore, which provide job opportunities for moderately autistic youths like Sebastien, proved to be disheartening. Unless I was prepared to place Sebastien in a work facility that requires him to perform the same repetitive tasks eight hours a day, five days a week, there were no openings for him. Such a soul-destroying vocation was not a fate that I would impose on myself or anyone else, let alone my son...

At this juncture, Sebastien has gained enough knowledge and experiences in life to possess the desire to continue his pursuit of an interesting and ever-evolving existence. He inhabits an inconvenient space of yearning for a young adult’s life, while lacking the necessary abilities to achieve it on his own. As his mother, I find myself stuck with “mission impossible”: How do you reconcile a young adult’s evolving ambitions and the limitations of his autistic condition?...  

To learn more about:

A Mother's Wish (AMW): http://www.awakeningminds.sg/amw/about_a_mothers_wish.html

AMW holiday programmes: http://www.awakeningminds.sg/amw/holiday_activities.html

Sebastien's paintings that help to subsidise AMW holiday programmes: http://www.awakeningminds.sg/sebs_raw_art.html

Kah Ying's writings:

http://www.awakeningminds.sg/books.html, http://www.awakeningminds.sg/articles_autism.html

Please feel free to share this email with others...

Much thanks,

Kah Ying