CEAT - Centre for Early Autism Treatment - Northern Ireland | Mattia's Story: By Paola, Mattia's Mummy

Mattia's Story: By Paola, Mattia's Mummy

What can you see in this picture? Two kids cycling and one child sitting alone, gazing at somewhere we cannot tell: this child is my son, my Mattia. When this picture was taken we did not know that he was autistic. Mattia is our only child. He was born in September 2002 after two miscarriages in ten years of marriage. He was always a "difficult" child, he would not eat or sleep. He cried and cried and we did not understand why. As an infant Mattia used one word,"atch,"to request for his bottle. "Mamma" came and disappeared.

I worried more and more, as months passed all my friend''s children could talk so I slowly started to refuse to see them, it was too painful for me. When he was three years old I took him to the mainstream school, it was immediately clear that he was different from all the others. Everybody sat in circle, my child walked around the trees, making strange sounds, flapping his hands, new self-stimulatory behaviours appeared from nowhere, more and more. It was frightening. He no longer played, he would just lie in bed, staring at the reflections of the lights, night and day. I was losing him day by day and I could not stop him from going away.

Two days after Christmas 2005, Mattia was seen by a specialist at the Local Health Unit, that's when I first heard the word I had always suspected secretly in my deepest feelings. "Your child is autistic." The internet is an incredible tool; in about a week I learned about therapies considered valuable. This is where I first learnt about early, intensive behavioural intervention and how it worked. I immediately decided that I had to give this chance to my child. The Italian government does not help us, and there are few experienced professionals and their waiting lists are over a year.

Early in 2006 I contacted CEAT to request for supervision and they sent me Sarah. I will never forget crying at the airport as soon as I saw the harp on her Ryanair flight appearing in the sky. I cried tears of joy and told everybody around me. "That plane is carrying a very special person for the life of my autistic son." Sarah found a speechless child, who had little, if any, comprehension of language, who could not imitate, who was anxious about any new situation, who found any transition challenging, who would not look at anybody's face.

No one in my team had ever worked as a home tutor before. We were the first Italian family receiving CEAT services. But everything we have done since May 2006 is just "heroic." We taught him how to behave like his peers: talking, playing, interacting, imitating, managing the transitions . . . these are just some of the range of behaviours we were able to teach him, session by session, target by target, month by month, workshop after workshop. Four years have passed since the first CEAT Consultant landed in Trieste's airport. Mattia's path has been chosen by many more Italian families. Kimberly has been with us since 2007. She literally took Mattia's hand and led him into the social world with her programmes. Mattia has learnt how to enjoy the company of his peers, how to be an active member of his class, how to learn in a group along with his peers, how to live his life at the fullest. His home-based programme, which he followed for more than three years has taught him how to learn.

Mattia is now academically ready for school, after learning how read, count, write and attend to a teacher. One of his tutors is still in the class with him this year, to make sure that Mattia can catch any available opportunity to generalize all the skills he learnt in his home programme. I continue to give Mattia some extra "tutoring" at home after school. Mattia continues to learn and grow every day, and it is amazing to watch him learn not only from indvidualised teachers, but from his classroom teachers, like and with his same-aged peers. Mattia's process of school inclusion is a novelty in Italy, just like ABA-based intervention was a novelty in our region four years ago. My Mattia is a braveheart indeed and I am so proud of him!