My son Sasha was diagnosed with «autism spectrum disorder» at 3 years. Then we were recommended to give it to an ordinary kindergarten — to the society, to the children, so that he gradually came into contact with them. But this, unfortunately, did not happen — he ignored the children. After 2 months we took him from the kindergarten. When my son was 3,5 years old, I met a well-known Moscow specialist Anastasia Vladimirovna MATVIEVSKAYA and her father, the author of the method Vladimir Yakovlevich MATVIEVSKY.
After that, for 3 years we went to them to the Moscow center, in spring and autumn they lived there for 2-3 months, passing a set of classes to exit this state. The emphasis was on the relationship between the child and mother. The technique is based on the fact that only mother can solve the problem: she needs to reconstruct the way of life, the way of thinking her and the child, the order of the lessons with the child, so that the environment in which the child is located becomes for him a healthy and decisive autistic state. The main work there was conducted with the parents, it is believed that just classes with the child will be useless. Then, several Almaty families with the same problem who also went to Moscow for classes, united and rented a house at their own expense — we continued to study there. At that time, the project had no name, now it is known as «Autism We Will Win», and the activist parents united in the Association of Parents of Autistic Children (A series of materials http://zoj.kz/ on this topic was published in the Health Expert in 2016. — Author’s Note).
When Sasha was 6 years old, we ran into the border in the development of speech. Thanks to Matvievsky’s work, he became an obedient, executive, contact boy, he was considered a leader for his level of development, he was pronounced. «Brought» — a term that indicates that the child is in contact with the outside world, in contact with people, and not in himself, in his morbid state. Thus, the behavioral issue was resolved. But speech … He did not understand her, did not speak for himself. Braced in this impasse, I began to look for and study different methods and options for development. Soon I came to understand that besides the medication treatment with nootropic drugs we need classical speech therapy (by the way, the strongest in the world since Soviet times). In Sasha, the autism spectrum was formed against the background of organic damage to the central nervous system, because of the same lesion there were speech difficulties. We found a specialist who worked with him on auditory attention and perception (basic in the development of speech), the development of pronunciation, replenishment of vocabulary, the development of logic, thinking and fine motor skills. The first successes of my son in speech activity showed that I chose the right path of development. However, not all of the speech therapists we met were conscientious: it happened that they transferred the classes, could not establish contact with the child, included articulation exercises on the laptop from YouTube — in this case specialists had to part. I met two wonderful teachers who perfectly knew the art of working with a child — a privately practiced speech therapist Natalia Vasilyevna BROSENSKY and the head of the association of speech therapists-defectologists Almaty Sonia Irshatovna SHUNAEVA. But there was one «but»: their services with the intensity of training as much as required by Sasha, we could not afford. I realized that if we do not have a speech to 6 years, then 2-3 lessons a week for us as a drop in the ocean.
In 2012, I myself went to a speech therapist, my son gave me the basic practice. I have read and studied a lot, but now I have approached this question thoroughly. Sonia Irshatovna offered me the idea to disaccustom herself. She noticed that the child responded to me much more, he listened to me better than I did. At first we agreed that she would give assignments, and I would fulfill them with Sasha. It turns out that my son chose me a new profession. My experience and success is all of him. Without exaggeration, I can say that we worked from morning till night. In everyday life, we said everything we did — dress, brush our teeth, take a spoon, each movement step by step. This is a very laborious work, not only that for 45 minutes he came to a speech therapist, «a», «y», «and» did with tongue. Each set of exercises done a day 3-5 times. Since then, I have also completed courses on psychomotor correction and neuropsychology.
The luck for us was that we found a music teacher — a unique teacher Galina Vitalievna Makarova came to work with her son with all her heart. Thanks to her efforts, Sasha developed a voice, breathing, articulation, auditory attention. Now he can already play the simple children’s songs with the piano by both hands and sing! In every lesson we rejoice in Sasha’s success in singing, he began to sing (and speak accordingly) much purer (louder and clearer), it became better to intone … We try to hold regular concerts at which children share successes with relatives and friends.
Seeing my son’s successes, the mothers of other autistic children began treating me as a specialist. According to them, they face the same thing: experts either do not undertake to work with them, or do it formally — according to the scheme, without an individual approach. In private at home or at their home, I worked with children for 3 years. Then came the understanding that we need to build our own platform, our own center for rendering these services — and there are many who need it, and there will be a place where to invite eminent experts to study with them.
The first invited experts were representatives of the Polish sensory integration center KLEKS (Warsaw) Robert and Agnieszka Lemanski. Agnieszka Lemanska — teacher, speech therapist, sensory integration therapist, collaborates with universities, conducts didactic classes for students. We chose them for three reasons. First, they have been practicing sensory integration for 15 years. Sensory integration is the processing of feelings coming from sensory organs, their structuring and ordering of the information thus obtained for the subsequent adequate response. Symptoms of autism often include difficulties in processing sensory information, such as touch, sounds, smells, taste, brightness and movement. These difficulties can make everyday situations unbearable. Secondly, in their work they use a non-directive approach in the classroom, that is, the game. A child with autism in the first place can not play, contact with peers, and communicate. And with the help of the game it is much easier to bring the child into contact. Third, and perhaps most importantly, they are very open, good-natured, conscientious people. I have long understood that the attitude of a specialist to a child is almost the most important in working with children in addition to knowledge and experience. The first time they visited Almaty in October 2016, after spending a 12-day training module. Invite them the second time we plan in May 2017.
We scrupulously chose a room for the center «Ray of Light». To him there were quite a few requirements: a total area of at least 200 squares, rooms without columns of at least 40 squares, large windows, lots of light. We were specifically not looking in the center, because in the residential area prices are cheaper, plus 80% of families live close by. As a result, we created a center similar to Kleks with our own hands — swings, beams, equipment, toys, weighted blankets and so on repeated. Problems were with everything: to order from abroad is expensive, in Kazakhstan there is nothing ready, so they made everything to order. Classes in our center cost 4000 tenge for an academic hour (3000 tenge for a lesson per month), which is lower than average prices for a market: a body-oriented therapy session for Almaty specialists costs at least 5000 tenge per hour, speech therapist services — 1500-8000 Tenge per hour.
The second most important task of our center in addition to working with children is the training of specialists. There will be qualified specialists — there will be successes in children! After all, even the best sensor room is nothing without a specialist who will teach the child in it. We regularly hold seminars of the country’s leading psychoneurologist, doctor of psychological sciences, professor Raushan Bedalievna KARIMOVA. For very many specialists, the knowledge of neurobiology and psychophysiology that it gives was a great discovery. In addition, Raushan Beydaliyevna helps many parents of our center and regularly conducts consultations on the development of children. She treats every child with great attention and always tries to give recommendations based not only on medical treatment. We have several experienced employees, but we are always interested in new employees. Since there are very few literate specialists working with children in the autism spectrum in our city (and in the country as a whole), we set one of the main tasks of our center’s work to prepare tutors (social workers) who will accompany the child with autism in the way of life and Help him. Especially valuable for us will be men — boys among autists the vast majority (world statistics say that out of 8 children diagnosed with 7 boys — Autorep.), And they should learn from men: there is another hormonal background, and other behavioral patterns. We choose employees in the center, looking at the attitude to their work, to their children, to their parents, to the problem we are facing. The specialist should have the research ability to every time in the lessons with the children to push the child forward, «to the exit.» is he should have such qualities of character as patience, cheerfulness, the ability to play and bring the child into direct contact.