Austism: a plea for understanding

THE DAVY family's gate is tied up with a thick rope, making it difficult for visitors to get in and hard for their youngest son, Matthew, to get out.
At four years old, Matthew likes cars, roads, water ? and escaping.
He also has no sense of danger or fear.
"He can now open the door and if the gate's left open he'll go down to the river," his mother, Vicki, said.
Last September Matthew was diagnosed as autistic.
His only word is "no", he is aggressive, he is not toilet trained and he lacks empathy with others.
When he was 15 months his parents noticed he was walking less confidently and from there he started to show other autistic traits.
For more than 18 months Matthew's parents fought to have him diagnosed as autistic, taking him to their GP and paediatricians who would not diagnose him.
"A lot of the behaviour at the earlier age, they attribute it to normal behaviour. (Doctors) seem to prefer to wait till they're three and a-half to diagnose them when they're grown out of their behaviours," she said.
A diagnosis of autism meant the family could have accessed support from Work and Income NZ and got a caregiver to watch him at kindy.
"Before (the diagnosis) it was like banging your head on a wall, because it seemed nobody wanted to know you. We knew something was wrong, they knew something was wrong, but they just didn't want to diagnose," she said.
Raising an autistic child had many challenges, such as keeping him safe, day in, day out.
"It's full-on; it's quite stressful?My focus at the moment is just keeping him safe."
Matthew could not tell them if he got hurt or bullied or communicate with others.
"We can't understand what he wants and he gets frustrated and I think a lot of the head banging is he gets frustrated," she said.
It was also difficult to take him out in public, as he threw things off the shelf in the library or in the supermarket, drawing stares of disapproval.
"He teaches me things all the time about patience. It's just amazing? the thing to do is stay calm and not lose it, because if you lose it, Matthew will just bang his head because he can't deal with anything."
For Autism Week, Vicki hoped people would try to be more understanding about autistic children and not "look down" on them or blame the child or parents for their odd behaviour.
She also hoped that it would get easier for parents of autistic children to access help, encouraging them to keep going to "get in people's faces" until they did.
And her hopes for Matthew?
"My hope is that eventually he'll talk and just that he'll be happy and healthy. It's quite sad; they just don't understand the world and people don't understand them."