These parents just want their kids with autism to be included
By CNA/Ili Mansor
This is Singapore's national football captain, Hariss Harun, with his wife and 11-year-old son Naufal, who has been diagnosed with moderate autism.
The couple tries to expose Naufal to various social settings so that he can grow up to be independent. However, he has been scolded by members of the public for what they think are 'inappropriate behaviors'.
'The fact that autism is an invisible disability makes it harder to go out there and explain the same thing every single time. It gets a bit exhausting after a while," said Naufal's mother Syahirah Mohamad.
For Ms Keenbie Kok, a mother to 13-year-old twins with autism, the weekly train rides that she takes with her sons can sometimes result in meltdowns.
Once, her sons felt overstimulated from the noise on a packed train and her older son started touching a man in front of him. 'I told him to stop … He began to scream in the train and everybody started looking at us,' she said.
If the public can give people with special needs a chance to be more included and more integrated in society, her sons will have a better shot at living independently when they grow up, she said.
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