‘It’s good time for parents to get trained’
When she is not helping her son through his Zoom classes, Sujatha Anandram likes to keep her 22-year-old son creatively engaged. They do household work together, listen to music and even exercise. Like all parents, Sujatha and her husband Anand have figured that the key to taking care of their son Vivasvat, who has autism, is to stick him to a routine.
Sujatha, a behavioural therapist to children aged 1-6 years old, admits that it’s tough because it requires a parent to completely monitor the child. Since Anand is busy all day working from home, that responsibility has fallen on Sujatha.
There are two perspectives Sujatha brings to the table — one, as an educator herself and second, as a parent. A concern common to both these roles is an anxiety about whether a prolonged lockdown could undo months and years of hard work she put into making her 22-year-old son independent. “He used to go for keyboard classes and to a physical instructor. Now he is not stepping out because he understands the situation. For me, the biggest scare is that I have worked all my life to make him independent, and now those efforts may just be going down the drain. The other issue is that when the lockdown eases and we all return to work, there may be a problem of transition because my son has got so used to staying at home and having his family around him.”
Anand, however, maintains that mapping development also depends on which stage of intervention programme the child was prior to the lockdown. “For a child who had progressed substantially, it is possible that their progress will not be hindered compared to a child who was at a very early stage of intervention.”