Week 13 of Serialization: Where Does My Autistic Son Belong?

In 2019, I published Where Does My Autistic Son Belong?. It chronicles my struggle with raising my adolescent autistic son, Sebastien, and my subsequent decision of setting a home for him in Bali. As part and parcel of A Mother’s Wish initiative (amotherswish.com.sg) to raise awareness about the need to treat autistic individuals with genuine respect and empathy, I am serializing the book on Medium (please see the links below for all the serialized chapters to date, including Chapter 13).

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CHAPTER 13

TAKE 2: SANTA ROSA

(February — March 19th, 2016)

The stickers present that Patricia bought for Sebastien, now attached on a cupboard in his bedroom in Singapore

One thing stood in the way of me pushing forward with the Santa Rosa solution: Roy, the would-be carer for Sebastien. Despite weeks of back-and-forth communication, always initiated by me, to share information about Sebastien, such as his latest meltdowns, Roy remained a huge question mark. When I had asked him why he had wanted to do this job that had some decidedly unpleasant aspects, Roy had given the politically correct, but vague, answer, “I want to help Sebastien get better”, without any elaboration. Somehow, it was hard for me to shrug off the feeling that he was just doing it for the money. Money should never be the chief motivation for anyone working with special needs individuals. I don’t think that you can get paid enough for some of the hardships that you might encounter... (read: Chapter 13)

To purchase the book, please use this link (https://www.amotherswish.com.sg/product-page/crowdfunding-pledge-s-30). Thank you very much!

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ALL SERIALIZED CHAPTERS:

Chapter 1

End of Chapter 1 and Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13