JILL SAMELSON will never forget the day that broke her heart. She was watching her 16-month-old son Adam playing with a bubble toy. Something wasn't right. Instead of trying to blow the bubbles, as he had done before, Adam inserted the stick in the bottle over and over in a mechanical way. Looking at him, she felt her heart sink. 'Oh my god, here we go again,' she said to herself.
Samelson felt a sense of foreboding because she had lived through this once before. Two years earlier, in 1997, her first child Elizabeth started to show the same kind of repetitive behaviour. At about the same age doctors diagnosed her as autistic. In the weeks that followed the incident with the bubbles, Samelson watched helplessly as Adam lost most of his social skills, including language.
Three weeks after he showed his first symptom, he was diagnosed with autism. A life-long disability, autism is a neurological disorder that affects the functioning of the brain. Autism, and its associated behaviour, typically appears during the first three years of life. Symptoms include no eye contact, no language, no social skills and repetitive and hysterical behaviour. Autism is four times more prevalent in boys than girls and knows no racial, ethnic, or social boundaries.
No single cause has been established, although it is generally accepted that it is caused by abnormalities in brain function. Researchers are investigating a number of theories, including the link between heredity, genetics and medical problems. There has also been much debate about the possibility that autistic disorders are caused by the combined measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine, although this is unproven.
It is a physiological rather than mental illness. There are no known psychological factors in the development of the child that have been shown to cause autism.
Six years living with the condition has turned Samelson from a young mother who had only heard about the disorder from the movie Rainman to an educator of her children and founder of The Children's Institute of Hong Kong. Sitting in the classroom by the beach at Repulse Bay, Samelson looks young and full of energy. She talks incessantly about the prospects that autistic people can enjoy given good education and intervention.