“We need help with autism”
A mother cries out
“We need help with autism”
GREAT BAY – The heart of a mother who has struggled for years with her son who was diagnosed with autism continues to cry out. Ingrid Nadal-Rombley (see photo) laments the fact that St. Maarten does not have a policy or support groups to assist parents with autistic children. She says that she had little to no support from the state when she first discovered her son had autism. The ordeal cost her, her government job, her stability and peace of mind. It also eventually impacted her family, which consisted of her daughter and husband. She is convinced that the government needs to develop a policy to address and cater to students with autism.
It was while doing research when pursuing a Public Administration course on policy governing special education that she discovered that there is no such policy on St. Maarten. “When you checked the government archives all you found was the name of the Prins Willem Alexander School, which is supposed to be a special education school but the only thing they had on file was the name,” Nadal-Rombley says.
She recalls the first time she discovered her son had autism was when he was about to enter kindergarten school and was graduating from pre-school. Ingrid’s son was not clad in the same clothes as the other graduates. “All the children knew what clothing they had to wear except him. We were not informed. Maybe they gave him a letter and maybe he didn’t give it to us or he ripped it up. When we got there he was dressed differently from everybody else.”
Additionally, he was behaving erratically during a presentation with the other children. “They had to give a presentation, they had to do a song and while everybody was standing and doing the song, he was spinning around and looking in another direction. It was odd to see him do that,” Nadal-Rombley recalled
When the child got to Kindergarten, the problem became worse and the school was having a hard time coping. The parents were called to the school regularly due to his behavior, but Nadal-Rombley was in denial and thought the school was at fault.
Eventually she sought professional help and was told what she did not expect to hear. A psychologist from Curacao diagnosed him with Attention Deficit Disorder. “He couldn’t do something simple like button his shirt…every day after school I would have to come out, take him inside and show him how to unbutton his shirt. Everyday I did the same exact thing and I kept doing that and it took maybe a year before he finally did it (on his own),” she said.
Nadal-Rombley had to help her son with writing as he was not writing adequately. A combination of diagnosis from different autism specialists, neurologist and psychiatrists in both Curacao and Aruba diagnosed him with epilepsy and Pervasive Development Disorder-Not otherwise specified (PDD NOS).
To make matters worse, the school could no longer keep her son and she was not about to try the others fearing the same fate, mainly because she believed they were not equipped to handle his situation.
The situation was impacting the mother’s employment. At the time she worked for Sector ROB (now known as Vromi). Since no school was willing to accommodate her son, she was forced to take him to work with her, which was not an ideal situation. “He was just running all over the office and I let him do it. Because if I am trying to explain what the issue is and you don’t care, then you have to see it,” she explained.
Eventually she had to travel with him to Groningen, Holland for further diagnosis and treatment. She was given time off to deal with the situation. Her son was finally diagnosed with autism and not the previous diagnosis he was given.
“The psychiatrist thought that based on the Foundation Based Education we have in St. Maarten, he would be able to get some kind of help. But by the time I came back and informed them about the diagnosis what I got from the school and everybody else was ‘we have reached as far as we can go with him, bye. We are not doing this anymore. He wasn’t allowed to go to school anymore.”
That was a short stint—two months. She returned to work but the situation had not changed for her son. It did though at her job. “The Sector Director was with pension and the one who took his place in the meantime, was already planning on getting me out of there. I didn’t know that at the time,” she said. “They were already transferring me to another ministry and I didn’t know. They already took all the work out of my hand…so I didn’t have anything to do,” Nadal-Rombley says. She used the time to research options to help her son. During this time her husband was also sick.
Upon advice, she discussed the situation with a psychologist, who encouraged her to pursue the government to ask for time off to take her son to Holland to have his situation dealt with urgently. She asked for five years leave of absence; she got three years.
In Holland, Nadal-Rombley encountered many challenges. Firstly, she needed a place to stay with her son. She eventually got an apartment through a mentor for St. Maarten students. She and her son slept on the floor of an apartment of a St. Maarten student who was on job training, while she looked at her options. But that did not last; when the student returned after about four months, she had to relocate.
Secondly, when her son was placed into a school for autistic children, there were several challenges. For one, he did not speak Dutch, hence there was a language barrier. “He couldn’t understand what anybody was saying and in the beginning he thought they were laughing at him. I had to be a translator to him.”
Then when he was placed in a class, it turned out not to be the right one. He was placed in an Autism group, but had to be relocated soon after. “They had children (in that group) with the weirdest things. There was a little boy who (behaved) like a snake. Just like a snake. Another one would be screaming all the time and another one would be touching you. He would be looking at you and touch your clothes. My son couldn’t deal with that,” she explained. Eventually he was placed in another group, where he did well.
Just being away from home in a strange country was hard for Nadal-Rombley to deal with. Her husband stayed back in St. Maarten, her daughter was already in Holland furthering her studies. Her husband came a few months later to see how they were coping and would travel occasionally between both countries to check on them. “I was never accustomed to live like a single parent but I had to live like that,” she recalled. “It teaches you to stand up on your own. It’s not easy.” But her son was making progress and wanted to come back home.
Nadal-Rombley stayed in Holland for six years trying to help her son get the attention he needed to improve his condition and cope with the effects of autism. But back home, she lost her job without even knowing. “I found out when I got here. I asked for an extension but I never got an answer. When I came here I found out they had terminated me in 2010. I never got notice of that,” she said. She returned to St. Maarten in 2014.
Returning to St. Maarten was just as difficult. Now without a job, Ingrid still had to get her son, now 16 in school and again no secondary school on the island was willing to accept him. Eventually, he was accepted at the St. Maarten Vocational School but it was not without challenges.
For Nadal-Rombley it was very challenging to be virtually a single parent in Holland dealing with her autistic son. She was hoping to start an active group to help parents with autistic children deal with the challenges of caring for their children. But, returning home without a job, she had to find work and it was difficult to engage in these activities while working. Currently employed, Nadal-Rombley still hopes to help parents with autistic children, as she continues to care for her son.
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