A mother’s love: Special centre’s super mom

Nasreen Akhtar is a mother of three autistic children.

ISLAMABAD: Meet Nasreen Akhtar, a proud mother of three autistic children. She has been working at the federal government’s only National Special Education Centre for Mentally Retarded Children (NSEC-MR) since 1998.

Speaking of the hard times, Akhtar told The Express Tribune that her eldest son, Naeem, was nine when she and her husband began realising that he might be special. A doctor’s panel in CDA Hospital informed them that he is autistic. The two younger kids, Hina and Bilal, were eventually diagnosed of the same neurological disorder.

Akhtar says she did not know of any special institution in the city until she saw a bus with the centre’s monogram.

“Naeem was a hyperactive kid, so I stayed with him all the time here as suggested by the teaching staff”, she said. “Now I am here to look after my two younger kids,” she added.

Akhtar quit her job of 10 years to work voluntarily as the head of the parent teacher association board and a treasurer at NSEC-MR. She maintains that she is here for the welfare of her kids and help parents of such children. “I understand what these parents go through. That is why I have been counseling them”, she said.

She noticed a great deal of improvement in her childrens’ behaviour after their enrollment in the centre. “This is not just a day care centre for special children. These kids are trained and helped to move on in their daily lives independently,” she explained.

Speaking about life outside the centre, Akhtar says she takes her children along to every social gathering and never leaves them home.

There are times when children and even elders end up passing an inappropriate remark. “Is your child mentally disturbed or just blind?” She said generally people do ask me out of curiosity about ‘what is wrong with my kids’ but I don’t mind such questions.

There are times when other women in the neighborhood have referred to Akhtar’s children as ‘jinns’, she recalls.

Akhtar feels that it is the responsibility of media and educationists to make the general public aware about how to deal with special children. “That is what I do on a daily basis. I always keep educating people around me about autism,” she says.

Concerned about their future, Akhtar said this centre offers education only till the primary level and once students pass out; there are no other institutions to turn to for higher education.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 28^th, 2015.