LIVING WITH TERRORISM - LOVING THE TERRORIST

My home is constantly under attack. Every day. Every night. We live with broken windows - or windows being broken - smashed doors and different rooms (usually the kitchen) being trashed. The more we secure our home the worse the attack becomes.

Terrorism is defined as "the unlawful use of violence and intimidation against individuals or properties." It is generally used in a political sense. The terrorism we live with is far from political. While it is directed at our property it is also directed at one individual, the terrorist himself.

This is Rourke. He is my stepson and autistic. He is one of triplets. His two brothers are also autistic but not at all aggressive or volatile. In fact Rourke lives with us because he upsets his triplet brothers so much. This photo was taken a number of years ago when he was less injurious towards himself. He has not always been this way. At 18 months the triplets were reaching milestones and happy babies. After the MMR vaccine they quickly deteriorated and were eventually diagnosed as autistic.

They lost fine motor skills. They lost speech. They were miserable, screaming, inconsolable. They stopped making eye contact. Hated physical contact. It was like they were newborn again. But desperately unhappy newborns. Rourke soon proved to be different to the other two in that he was a very difficult and destructive child. As the years have passed and different modalities, diets and overseas trips to specialists been tried they have grown to young adults. They remain on the autistic spectrum despite younger children being healed (through very strict healing natural protocols). Because they are among the oldest generation of autistic children in South Africa our country is only now waking up to the fact that something needs to be done. Places need to created for this special group of children. Until and unless we can get him into a place better equiped to cope with him and stimulate him where we no longer can, he lives with us. And it is a daily - an hourly - challenge.

He screams. He vomits up his food. He hits his head. As I mentioned; he breaks things. It is through no fault of his own. I believe his obsession with destruction is due to his frustration. But it is exhausting and extremely disturbing to us. Not to mention expensive. As fast as we replace windows he throws rocks through them. We have cut down thorn trees to barrier portions of our house. He runs through or over with no thought to the pain and injury. We have built a tall wall. He climbs it. Somehow. Last week my husband spent two days adding height to the wall by putting a fence on top. Rourke snapped off those rods as if they were matchsticks!

Now that our house is mostly secure he has re-directed his attack. He is throwing rocks at his grandparents house which is higher up the mountainside, near ours. There is a huge effort among the international media to create awareness of autism. However it is not a positive move. They claim that autism is NOT due to vaccination (I won't get into that topic right now and don't wish to have comments arguing the pro- anti- vaccination subject, please). They also claim that autism is a blessing. This sounds very nice and hopeful. But if you live with autism you will understand they are simply downplaying the reality. I can assure you Rourke does not consider himself blessed or a blessing. He is miserable. I can assure you, though we love him, our life is no fun. We don't go away. We don't have visitors. Our lives are constantly interrupted by dealing with a new Rourke crisis. Our hearts ache for him but it is as though our hands are tied. We constantly hope and pray for a miracle. Until then we have to live with the terrorism and make others aware.

Educate before you vaccinate