I felt irritated whenever I saw anti-vaccine posts in my Facebook news feeds. My finger instinctively moved towards the option to “see fewer posts like this.” But as these posts kept on popping up, I eventually gave the newsfeed algorithm an ultimatum. “Stop showing posts from this source!” It didn’t work. More vaccine-related news and stories found their way into my feeds from other sources.
“What does the vaccine have to do with autism?!” I wondered. British doctor Andrew Wakefield’s research paper claiming that MMR is linked to autism was thrown out and dismissed as a fraud in 2010. So when a friend told me her child suffers from “vaccine injury” I thought she was out of her mind.
Shortly after, another friend expressed her concerns about vaccines. She is well educated and her child is as smart as a whip. Yet, she has no faith in the CDC and FDA.
“Vaccines are safer in China,” she said, “I rarely saw any children with special needs there. Here in America, I see so many such cases…”
I could not bury my head in the sand. Almost every other family I know struggles with some health or developmental issues in at least one of their children. You name them – asthma, eczema, allergies, speech delay, and probably the most horrid of all – autism spectrum disorder (ASD).
I wanted more information; I wanted to hear from a source that is fair and balanced. I did not want to hear propaganda from either side of the vaccine debate. I came upon a documentary The Greater Good (2011) and it captured my full attention right from the start. It’s emotional, it’s upsetting, and it made a skeptic out of me as I became wary of unchallenged, conventional practices.
I could not get over the fact that a once alert, vivacious baby would turn into a wordless toddler with a fixed gaze, and that he would reach his adolescence completely dependent on his parents. “He’ll never date, marry, and have children of his own.” These were his mother’s exact words.
I was stunned to find out the doubling of vaccine requirements started about a decade ago. In other words, children that were born after the millennium are almost like – forgive my choice of words – LAB RATS as the first wave of kids to be so heavily vaccinated. There was no scientific data to guarantee their safety. The only data we have is this: around 1 in 68 children has been identified with some form of ASD, according to CDC.
Then something clicked in my head. And I felt compelled to tell our story.
My son was born in 2005. Immediately after birth, he scored a perfect 10 on the Apgar test. He met all the developmental milestones and began to speak simple words at age one. At one point I was almost certain he spoke his first phrase in Chinese, to our delight and surprise. I started to teach him the alphabet, numbers, and even Chinese before he turned two.
Around that time, I gave birth to my second child. My mother’s friend came to stay with us to help. She noticed my 2-year-old son’s gait and commented, “Children that walk on their tip-toes might have [developmental] problems.” I’ve never heard of such a thing before so I dismissed it as an “old wife’s tale.”
A few months later, a friend visited us and saw my son quietly and absorbedly drawing on his own, while other kids were playing elsewhere together. “Something doesn’t seem right about your son. He appears to be autistic.” I felt humiliated and even angry.
Another month went by. Someone close to us sent me an e-mail and in which it said, “I have worked with children with autism, and I think your son is autistic.” That was the final straw. I broke down and cried bitterly. It cannot be. They are making this all up.
I could live in denial all I wanted – but my husband simply would not accept our son the way he was.
At age 3, my son could only communicate in fragmented phrases and simple words. At one point I was teaching him to say things like “how are you” as if he was not a native English speaker.
Whenever he was frustrated, he’d throw himself on the ground, even in public places, especially in public places. He’d flop his arms wildly and had exaggerated body movements. As a result, he usually ended up on the floor.
He displayed repetitive behaviors. He was fascinated by the last page of Chicka Chicka Boom Boom that he’d spent hours each day recreating the same exact pattern using the alphabets I bought for him.
He ignored people when they talked to him. He lived in his own world with his favorite characters from Blue’s Clues, singing to himself and imitating their moves. He memorized all the clues and made drawings of them over and over again. Initially, it was cute and funny. But when these papers grew to be a big stack of identical drawings, my concerns and fear also grew.
My son and I often had playdates with a friend’s daughter who was about the same age. While she showcased her rich vocabularies and amazing comprehension skills, my son seemed to be stuck in the “stone age” with an uncanny ability to…spell. He was spelling words at age 2. But he didn’t know what they meant; neither could he tell us why he was writing alphabets which formed words.
He had an awkward gait. He was clumsy and uncoordinated. He was not able to catch the ball that was thrown towards him and he would miss it badly. My husband is a hopeless basketball junkie. Having a son that could not play ball was a nightmare for him. A friend of ours who is a PE teacher once said this about our son, albeit half-jokingly. “Every family has a nerd. He is your nerd,” she then pointed at my older daughter, “That one over there? She’s your athlete.”
“Oh, God, I don’t need him to spell! I just want him to be “normal”!” In exasperation, I cried out to God. Normal – is all I wanted for my child. I longed for him to be able to play and interact with other children, to talk about his day and his…feelings.
There were no other children quite like our son in our social circle. Everyone was eager to show us how to find professional help for him. However, it was painful to listen to all this advice and suggestions. I didn’t want to accept the fact that my son would end up with some kind of label…for the rest of his life. But out of concern for his future, I called an agency recommended by our pediatrician.
“You are calling us now? How old is your son? What? He’s almost five? That’s too late. We usually start at two.” I was given another number to call, another agency to try.
After spending two days exchanging voice mail, playing phone tags, and not getting a callback, I gave up and threw in the towel. We were going to do this on our own. We were not going to pursue any of these therapists. We announced in our church small group, “What we have left now is faith. By faith, we are going to see things turned around in six months.”
It sounded irresponsible. What kind of crazy faith is it? Just throw up a prayer and hope for a miracle cure? No, this is not how we practice our faith. “Faith without work is dead,” wrote St. James in the Bible. My husband and I rolled up our sleeves and set out to work.
I decided to homeschool our son. I gave him my full attention. We used a video-based curriculum, so I sat with him through all the classes, as if I was his classmate. I made sure he understood what was taught to him. I also started teaching him to play the piano – which turned out to be an activity that completely suited him. He didn’t quite know how to relate to others but when it was just him and the keyboard, he felt at ease. There were days when he’d spend hours playing the keyboard – from the first song to the last and over again. I think this happened because of his tendency to prefer repetitive, predictable routines.
My husband decided to take on our son as a challenge. He taught him to shoot basketball, dribble, and pass. As long as it’s not too cold, he’d take him out to the park and train him. He also taught him to ride the bike. Because of his lack of coordination, riding a bike was not intuitive for him. But to our surprise and delight, he did pick it up after a few weeks.
It was neither by design nor intent, but his normal and verbal two-year-old sister became his constant companion who inadvertently taught him how to function in the real world. While my son’s impairment was the source of our heartache, he was her world and even a role model. She adored him, called him “Ge Ge” (meaning “big brother”), and followed him around the house. She didn’t seem to care she was speaking more fluidly than he was and that she often had to finish his sentences for him.
We took joy in seeing incremental improvements. As long as he was making progress each day, we were hopeful that it would only be a matter of time before he caught up with his peers in speech and comprehension.
We gradually walked out of that dark shadow that had hounded us. By the time my son was in 2nd grade, he was beginning to behave and look like a typical 8-year-old. We heard back-and-forth conversations between him and his sisters. He was relating to other boys. He behaved like a big brother as he watched out for his sisters, taught them to play board games, and helped them with school work. Now he fully enjoys friendships and desires to be with boys his age. He has outgrown hobbies, toys, shows, and games that once fixated him. He no longer insists on using this one special pen for his class. He looks at me in the eyes when he speaks. Although he is not as sensitive as his sisters, he can tell whenever I am sad or angry. Although he is not as expressive and conversant as other boys, he can speak kind and caring words at appropriate times and situations.
Lately, there have been lots of TV ads and commercials about autism.
“What is autism?” My now 11-year-old son asked, just the other day. My husband and I exchanged a long glance. He decided that he’d be the one to answer. He gave him a long and non-clinical definition as if it was an irrelevant, unfamiliar condition.
Did my son suffer an injury following his vaccine shots? We will never know for sure. While my two other normal children have vexing seasonal allergies, he dodged all of these bullets. He can eat practically anything without breaking out in a rash. He is able to enjoy the great outdoors without worrying about the pollen counts of the day.
Somehow I didn’t see these blessings and give thanks to God for them. I only focused on what was wrong with my child, and not what was right with him.
I think it’s a moot point to discuss whether any of our children suffer from vaccine injuries – unless we want to make a claim against the Federal Court. The issues and challenges our children face are ours to deal with. Finding a culprit to blame will not change a child with special needs. However, learning and knowing about the potential side effects of vaccines should give us greater compassion for the children that might have been injured. We, the society, did this to them. For the greater good of humanity, we indiscriminately leave trace amounts of chemical additives in their tiny bodies. The medical science won the battle by eradicating deadly diseases through vaccination, but we lost the war to perpetual uncertainty and fear of what damages vaccines might have already done.
I will be keeping an eye out for all the new studies on vaccine safety. Let us be informed and let us be passionate advocates for our children. We only have them for eighteen years and let us keep it that way.