Sergey Abramov

Sergey has three children. The youngest, Vova, arrived ten years ago. He was a perfectly normal kid.

When he was one and a half, Vova became seriously ill. First he had severe flu, then it was chickenpox. According to Sergey, these illnesses may have acted as a kind of trigger, setting his young body on an “alternative developmental pathway”. The exact causes are unknown, and they’re beside the point – what mattered was helping the child.

At first, they noticed problems with Vova’s speech development. He became withdrawn. Sometimes, he would fixate on particular actions. It was only later that his parents found out the name for this condition. He had autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and it couldn’t be treated. Based on the initial symptoms, they went to a regular speech therapist. Next, they visited a number of specialists in search of a miracle cure.

“You have to accept very quickly that there isn’t going to be some kind of silver bullet or wonder drug. You can’t fix it with visits to specialists overseas or anything like that. It took our family quite a while to come to terms with this,” Sergey acknowledges. “The only things that help are specialist developmental exercises, faith in your child, and perseverance. Everything you’d need to repeat ten times for a regular kid to learn, you need to repeat a thousand times.”

Vova attends the specialist St. George School in Moscow. Three times a week, he has sessions with a neuropsychologist, a speech therapist, and an applied behaviour analysis (ABA) therapist, as well as music lessons. He also does hippotherapy, which is a form of treatment involving horses. All of these activities take place in different areas of the city, but his parents aren’t giving up. They’re making progress, albeit slowly. The important thing is to keep trying.

“The older children with ASD are, the more noticeable the gap becomes between them and neurotypical children,” Sergey says. “We’re trying to close this gap and help our son adapt to independent living, as well as finding his calling and purpose in life.” Today, Vova loves music and is taking his first steps towards mastering the keyboard. Who knows – maybe this is that calling, a means of expressing himself through music. And even if his progress isn’t rapid, it’s moving in the right direction.