Mr. Speaker, today I am not going to get into a whole bunch of statistics and definitions. Instead I am going to talk about my own experience as the father of a now 16-year-old boy with autism, my son Jaden. Before I do that, though, I would like to extend some recognition.
First of all, I would like to thank Senator Munson for moving this important legislation forward in the first place. I would like to thank my good friend and colleague from Kitchener—Conestoga for sponsoring the bill in the House.
I would particularly like to thank the Minister of Health, who declared that as of April 2, 2009, each April 2 will be known as World Autism Awareness Day in Canada. That is an important step. That is what the bill addresses in legislation today.
I would also like to thank colleagues from all parties, who have been very supportive of my family. They have met Jaden and wanted to know more about the situation, know more about autism, so that they can be more informed as they go out into their own constituencies.
First and foremost, I want to thank my son Jaden, who is a tremendous example for me and obviously one of the most important people in my life.
I also want to thank my wife Debi and my daughter Jenae, who hold the fort down at home.
My daughter is now 13 years old. When she was four or five, she did a little interview with the autism newsletter. One of the things that she said is “I'm Jaden's little sister, but I'm like his big sister”. She went on to say that she had to protect him and keep him safe from things like permanent markers and hot stoves. At 13 years old, Jenae is still keeping Jaden safe.
My proudest moments as I think about my daughter are the moments when she does not know that we are watching. We hear her playing games with Jaden, interacting with him, keeping him out of harm's way or helping him because he is upset with something and trying to talk him through it. She is an amazing little big sister to him.
Why is autism awareness so important? It is important because early diagnosis is critical for people with autism. There is a short window of time when kids are young. We have more and more information about autism. There has been more and more research that shows that early treatment is absolutely essential for people with autism. In order to get that early treatment, we need doctors to be aware of the signs of autism, we need parents to be aware of them and we need the broader public to be aware of them.
Looking back in our own circumstance, when Jaden was 18 months old and knowing what we know now, we could have recognized the signs of autism had we been more aware, but even at the time, the doctors suggested that some boys just talk late, so they sent us for speech training and workshops and things like that.
It was six months later, after we had lost six months of that window, that we read a book about autism and recognized what we were dealing with. It was autism. A cousin mentioned it to us as well. It was six months later that we finally received a diagnosis. Thankfully, that delay does not happen as often today as it did over a decade ago, because people are more aware.
Another reason that awareness is so important is that families need support. I remember one particular circumstance when I was having a discussion about respite with someone who knew my son had autism but did not know what we dealt with on a daily basis. He asked me, “Why should the government provide a babysitter for your son?” It was one of those things that made me realize that people do not understand it the way we live it. They do not see the 24/7 stress that families are under, the constant need to be on high alert for fear of the child's safety or for the other kids.
Jaden is like a three- or four-year-old in a 16-year-old's body now. The difference from when he was three and four, though, is that he is much quicker and much stronger than he was. When he sees a dog across the street, he still has no concept of traffic, but he can get to that dog very quickly. If we are not paying constant attention to him when we are out, he will just run across the street if he sees a dog.
In fact, when we were on Parliament Hill a couple of years ago for Canada Day and a man was walking a German shepherd dog across the lawn, we had our eyes off Jaden for a second, and he bolted to this German shepherd. Before we had time to even think about it, he had grabbed the German shepherd by the neck and was sticking his face into the German shepherd's face.
It turned out that the man who was walking the German shepherd was a security guard and the German shepherd was a trained dog. The man happened to know Jaden and made sure he got in between so that the dog would not react to him, but we can imagine if it was some other dog; Jaden would have no awareness of that.
The same things apply in relation to water, traffic and those types of things. We have to be constantly vigilant that Jaden does not get himself into trouble because he sees those things like a three- or four-year-old would see them, not like a regular 16-year-old would see them.
We also need to be aware of the things they do see but maybe do not understand. A common story is that a child at six or seven years old looks like any other child, but when the child throws himself down in a grocery store or acts up in a restaurant, people wonder why the parents are not disciplining the child or doing something about it. There was a story of a family that got kicked out of a restaurant in Edmonton because of a situation like that. As families, we need people to understand that.
There are some funny stories that go along with that, and every family has their own. In my case, I remember one particular time when Jaden was about eight years old and we were walking through a parking lot. He walked up behind a lady who was walking on her own and grabbed her hand. Jaden was a very cute eight-year-old, and she thought it was very cute. Then he proceeded to take her fingernail and pick his teeth with it, at which point she was not thinking he was quite as cute any more and went running off with a little scream. There are moments like that.
There was the time that I was at an Oilers game. I worked for the Oilers before I was elected and decided to take Jaden to an Oilers game. He was probably in that same timeframe of six or seven years old at the time. We were sitting in the seats watching the game and everything was good. All of a sudden, out of the blue, he decided to reach over the shoulder of the five-year-old girl in front of him and grab the ice cream off of the top of her cone, stick it in his mouth and eat it straight out of his hand. It took a few seconds for me to explain to the father what was going on, and, as usual, he was good with it once he understood.
These are the things that happen, and we need people to understand.
When Jaden was 13 years old, just three years ago, he went through a time when he was experiencing an absolutely debilitating anxiety, a time that was very difficult for us as parents. There were times when he would go through two hours of absolute stress and anxiety. His body would get rigid, he was scared and he could not explain what was going on because he could not talk. We would just have to hold him and hope the anxiety subsided. It was a very difficult time for the family. Those are the things that people do not see, and sometimes family members need a break from those things. Families need people to understand what they are going through.
I notice, as always happens when I talk about my son, that time is slipping away quickly, so I am going to move on to a couple of other things that I want to talk about. I want to talk about people with autism contributing and give one more example from our family's life.
As people with autism get older, they can contribute in vocational things. In Jaden's case, he can work in the library. There are many who can contribute as artists or researchers or computer programmers.
Something that has happened recently in Jaden's life that has been really meaningful to us is that he is now in a regular grade 10 classroom, and his classmates chose to include him in a musical theatre production of Oliver that they were doing. These kids practised for dozens and dozens of hours as they got ready for this performance. One would think that they would be laser-focused on having the smoothest performance they could possibly have. The choreography was fantastic and took a lot of work to coordinate. However, instead, they invited Jaden to be a part of this process.
There was a scene of Jaden dancing a little off the beat from the rest of the kids, from time to time meandering a bit to the side of the stage and wandering off. One of his friends grabbed his elbow and brought him back to the rest of the group so that he could continue to participate. They worked hours helping him to understand what the steps were and to include him in what they were doing.
I cannot say how much it meant to my family and Jaden that they included him, but also how much it meant to those kids in the end, who really benefited from learning that important life lesson at that stage in their lives, a life lesson that will move them to include people in employment in the future and to look for opportunities for people like Jaden to contribute throughout their lives.
I will conclude by recognizing all of the people who have autism themselves, as well as their family members and friends who live with this disorder each and every day of the year. I want to let them know how much I admire them for their perseverance and for what they contribute to make the lives of those around them better. God bless them.