As a father, Cai Chunzhu is not an average one. The TV writer has become something of a celebrity with his microblog, Papa Loves Xihe, a funny but affectionate feed about his autistic two-year-old son, Xihe.

Xihe was diagnosed with autism in February, leaving Cai in agony. "When the doctor said the word autism, I knew that my dawdling days are gone. On my way home, the roaring cars couldn't cover my crying sounds," Cai wrote in his microblog shortly after the diagnosis. But then, after a short period of dark days, Cai began his black humor microblog to record his son's growing process.

"The first thing that comes into my mind every morning is what my son going to do years after," Cai said. "Autistic children are now discriminated against by others. Kindergartens and schools don't want to enroll them. There is no cure method for this disease."

In order to shake off the low spirits, Cai makes fun of his son and posts jokes on his microblog to encourage himself. At first he went to Beijing Stars and Rain (Xingxingyu), China's first non-governmental educational organization dedicated to serving children with autism, but it was too far and now Cai sends his son to a small private kindergarten. He is going to publish his book with the posts on his microblog and said, "I really want to become well-known by making fun of my son, because I want to make money in order to let him live more comfortably in the future."

Daily Life

If a child is diagnosed with autism, one of the parents usually has to resign and stay home with the child all day. Xihe's mother now stays at home, leaving Cai as the only breadwinner. "I want to publish the book to earn some treatment money for Xihe," he said, "but what the government should do hasn't been done, for example, why won't the public schools enroll autistic children?"

Though public schools don't enroll autistic children, there are still dozens of organizations in Beijing that enroll autistic children and provide help and assistance for the parents, but most of those are private ones. Among them, Beijing Stars and Rain is the most well-known and longest-running non-governmental educational organization in China devoted to serving children with autism (www.guduzh.org.cn). Daxing Autism Rehabilitation Center at the autism medical department of Daxing Mental Hospital is the first organization approved by the Ministry of Public Health with professional doctors, training teachers and nurses to apply medical treatments (www.bjgdz.com). Other institutions are Beijing Xingwaibaobei Training Center (Director Wang Guoguang, 136-6136-7542), Wucailu Children Rehabilitation Training Center (www.wucailu.com), Beijing Yangguangtianshi Autism Special Training Center (www.yggdz.com), and the Beijing Association for Rehabilitation of Autistic Children (www.autism.com.cn).

Since there is no national authoritative organization for autistic children, in order to find the right place, Rika Ishihara, a member and full-time volunteer at the Beijing Association for Rehabilitation of Autistic Children, offered some tips for parents.

"Autism is now incurable, thus organizations that say they can cure it are nothing but frauds," she explained.

"We admit that children with autism can have the gift of arts, but not all of them do. I met one organization whose director thought that autistic children can create works of art as long as you offer them paper and pen, which is ridiculous. Also, if they don't offer the training course for parents, don't believe them either."

Assisted treatments

According to Zhang Yueheng, director of the autism medical department of Daxing Mental Hospital, there are now 20 autistic children hospitalized in his department, and each of them has a plan based on his or her symptoms. "We introduced ABA (applied behavior analyses, a scientific method to bring about meaning behavior change) and RBI (research based instruction, a specific approach to classroom teaching with less emphasis on having students be active researchers) training from America, where the rehabilitation treatments are advanced," he said. "Those training courses are will adopted in the rehabilitation of autistic children."

"We also have animal treatments that let children interact with dogs because children may not feel nervous besides animals," Zhang went on. "Considering that children may have talents in arts, we also have music and drawing lessons. On average, children will make progress after two months. After half a year, they can go to kindergarten, but they need to take three tests: one before they enter this hospital, a mid-term test and one before they're discharged. If the results of the discharge test are much better than the one they took before entering or has already reached the set goal, they can go and another autistic child can come in."

"Unlike other autism organizations, Beijing Stars and Rain has 24-hour education training aimed at children aged from 12 to 18. If parents are busy, they can let their children lodge here," Sun Zhongkai, director from the development department, Beijing Star and Rain said. "We also offer some help to the parents."

"Besides letting children have eight hours of lessons, their parents need to attend lessons too," Zhang said. "Parents need to learn from the teachers here how to deal with autistic children and teachers can discover and correct the wrong educational habits of parents too, so that when their children go back to home, parents can proceed with the education."
Tie the bond

Parents who hear that their child is diagnosed with autism often experience a period of depression like Cai did, but according to Rika Ishihara, the quicker parents get rid off the bad emotions, the higher possibility their children will make progress.

"It is the parents who perform the main role in the rehabilitation of autistic children. From my experience, the children who've made big progress all have strong and optimistic parents standing behind them," she said. "The treatments of centers or organizations should be considered an assist method. The rehabilitation fee is usually expensive and what's more, there are so many children waiting in the line. "

"I first let my family accept Qianqian, and we decided to find the proper way for my girl to study instead of running around trying to find an organization, hoping that she can become a normal person," said Lin Jie, mother of a 16-year-old autistic girl named Qianqian. "I've read lots of materials I got from Beijing Association for Rehabilitation of Autistic Children and I've rushed around Beijing to lobby schools to accept my child. Now she is taking classes in a private high school. Parents should be proud of their child and think that their child is unique instead of pushing them out to others."

Lan Shengrong, mother of a 17-year-old girl named Wanjun told the Global Times that her autistic child made her abandon her goals of fame and worldly pursuits. "If I had a normal child, I would be a crazy mother," she said. "I talked to my girl in English right after she was born, hoping that she could have a solid foundation of English. But when she was nearly two years old, when people talked to her in Chinese, she wouldn't respond, and I suddenly stopped talking to her in English, which later I discovered was a terrible mistake, because autistic children are so sensitive to changes of environment."

Ishihara also suggested that parents should prepare a notebook to record the child's behaviors everyday. Teachers and babysitters should write in it too in order to let parents know about the child's conditions and progress. "Also, families should reach an agreement on how to educate the child, they should set a short-term goal and a long-term goal to guide their child to have improvements," she added.

"Parents will take it for granted that the child has already tied the bond with them because they gave life to them, but the fact is, children with autism don't think so," Ishihara continued. "Parents should build an intimate relationship with their child and accept them as they are."

Signs of autism

It is said that the autism can be developed as early as pregnancy, but China now doesn't have the technology to diagnose autism during that period. Usually, children are found to be autistic from age one and two, which is considered to be the "golden age" for autistic children to get treatment.

"Generally speaking, children that can't talk, or can only say simple words repeatedly and don't having eye contact may have the possibility that have the autism," said Zhang. "If parents think that their child may suffer autism, they need to go the hospital to identify the condition. It is suggested that people should go to a mental hospital instead of private organizations to get a diagnosis, and they should get down to finding the organizations or centers to take care of the autistic child immediately after the condition is confirmed. If they miss the golden treatment period (before 3 years old), or the sub-golden treatment period (aged 3 to 6), the conditions will become worse."

Besides those symptoms mentioned by Zhang, Rika Ishihara mentioned that autistic children are often observed to react poorly when they can't control changeable things, be afraid of strange environments and keep repeating one thing constantly, over and over again.