Mystery of the baby who never cried

By Sally McDonald

ELDIE Quartey is a superhero.

Like many eight- year- olds he is never happier than when donning his costume and pretending to be Superman.

But Eldie has a special something that sets him aside from other children.

“Eldie was the baby who never cried,” says Airdrie mum Gillian Quartey, 44.

“When he was 11 months old and needed to be fed, hugged or changed, his only way of communicating was to bang his head until it bled.

“It was hugely distressing. But when I shared my concerns with my health visitor, she suggested I just follow Eldie with a pillow to help protect his head”.

Eldie has high functioning autism.

It means that while it seems that he can do the things other youngsters do, below the surface lurks a debilitating condition which can make normal social settings – like a visit to the supermarket, school or plain old play – terrifying for him.

For most of his young life it went undiagnosed, leaving his mum- of- four struggling to cope.

Today Gillian – with a diagnosis finally under her belt and having given up work to devote herself to her family – says she is indebted to the The National Autistic Society’s Daldorch Family Support Programme.

And to local group Hope AUTISM is a lifelong developmental disability that affects how a person communicates with, and relates to, other people. It also affects how they make sense of the world.

It is a spectrum condition, which means that, while people with autism share certain difficulties, their condition affects them in different ways.

Around 58,000 people in Scotland have autism. With for Autism and Reach Lanarkshire whose knowledge and support helped turn her family’s lives around.

Gillian claims: “For seven years I struggled alone. The people who were meant to help me – health visitors, GPs, paediatricians, social workers and teachers – had little or no understanding of autism and dismissed my concerns out of hand.

“Until the family support programme I felt like I’d been their families they make up around 232,000 whose lives are touched daily. According to the National Autistic Society, families take the lion’s share of caring, with little training or support.

Its Daldorch programme is based in Ay r s h i r e but operates throughout Scotland, providing support, including a helpline, expert autism seminar training and one-to-one guidance in the home. feeling my way in the dark.

“At three- and- a- half Eldie had just three words: ‘choochoo’, ‘Subaru’ and ‘bee’, a pet name for his sister, Caitlin.

“He would line up his cars along the hallway in a very precise way. If you touched just one, he would go ballistic. The health visitor suggested I give him fewer toys to play with.

“I couldn’t take him to a shop because he would become distressed and try to pull everything from the shelves. Like many people with autism, Eldie has extreme sensitivity to sounds, lights, colours and smells. He can become disorientated and distressed.”

She adds: “I had to keep explaining to professionals that this was not a problem with discipline. I have three other well- behaved children. But I started to question myself.

“Some nights I would think, ‘maybe he really does just need the spanking of his life and all this will go away’. The worst thing is for a mother to doubt her own instincts and I knew in my heart that what was going on with Eldie was much more serious. But noone would believe me.”

Armed with their new knowledge and skills, the family – including siblings Caitlin, 18, Efia, 7, and Rhys, 8 – are now better able to understand him.

Says Gillian: “I have so much more patience with him now because now I know what he’s going through and I know what I need to do.”