Daddy, talk more about cables!
The fact that David was diagnosed with highly functional autism had a tremendous influence on our life. Everything turned upside down. All the values, all the unspoken words in our minds degraded to a bleak constant fear about the inconsistent future of our son.
It took us a long time to accept the fact, to understand it and to cope with it. It is said that autism is a shell where a child lives in isolation. Looking back at our first years of struggle, I would call autism a box in which the whole family of an autistic child live.
In order to extract our child from the unwanted isolation we had to get out of the box.
We were forced to think different, to change our life and to accept new perspectives, to be ready to step over invisible borders that kept our son prisoner.
In the autum of 2010 we commenced the ABA (applied behavioural analysis) therapy.
Four hours a day and many other therapies, speech therapy, art therapy and every kind of therapy we heard of.
My wife Mike read about dolphin therapy. She came to me one day in March 2011 and she told me about it. We said let’s do it, and we didn’t think too much.
We paid everything in advance, the dolphin therapy, the plane tickets and hotel in Antalya, Turkey.
We got there and we took two therapy sessions. I was talking to Mike saying her that we should consider our trip to Antalya and the dolphin therapy as a reward for all the work David did all that time.
He was non verbal in October 2010, not responding to his name calling and appearantly not interested in surrounding world. We didn’t notice at that time any fragrant influence of the dolphin therapy.
After a lot of therapy, David started to use sentences of two words. And he was in love with technical things. I am an engineer and there were a lot of cables, circuits and light bulbs in our house.
Many of his questions were about these things. He loved to hear me talking about them.
In the hotel’s restaurant in Antalya there was a technical niche with a lot of pipes and cables. The first days we stayed there he took me by my hand, pointed to the cables and said to me: “Talk cables”. And I was starting to talk about each cable and pipe. “This is a ethernet cable, that is a fire alarm cable. This is a lighting cable and that is a high voltage cable.”
And David was breathing every word I’d said.
After the third day of therapy we took the bus from the dolphinarium to the hotel.
It was pouring with rain. The bus was crowded, and the windows were steamed.
I was holding David in my arms, not seeing anything outside, waiting for the driver to warn us where to get off that bus.
Straight from the bus we went into the hotel and to the restaurant. We chose our usual table and Mike was bringing some food when David stood up and took my hand.
He looked at Mike first and then he turned his eyes to me and sighed. He took a deep breath and he said to me: “Daddy talk about cables more!”.
After almost 5 years of silence and sentences of maximum two words, David clearly expressed his need in something with a five words sentences.
I don’t know what happened. It was maybe the joyful swim of the dolphins that surfaced David from this silent shell of autism.
Indeed I read all Nathanson’s writings about dolphin therapy. Indeed I listened to all explications of Dr. Murat Kemaloglu, founder of Antalya Soul Science School.
Yet I can’t understand what happened to David.
Since then, I swimmed with dolphins many times together with David and Mike.
There is something amazing in the energy and joy they offered us everytime.
I don’t know what other adults or children felt when swimming with dolphins.
I just know that David showed increased capacity of concentration and learning after every trip we took to Antalya for dolphin therapy.
Since then, David grew up, being a fantastic boy. He is in love with photography, traveling and knows a lot of things from geography.
He is writing now on his blog : http://david.stescu.ro where you can also see many of his pictures.
I inserted some photos. Except the photos showing David, all others are taken by him, using his camera or his phone.
It looks like photography may be his passion and we encourage him wit it. He already had exhibited 3 times in personal exhibtions.
