Learning Curve

Up to 75,000 New Zealanders could be on the autism spectrum and diagnoses are increasing. 

- Sally Blundell

In Northland in mid-winter, 10-yearold Amy was worried the unwell and unwanted animals at the local SPCA branch must be getting cold. She drew an abstract artwork, had it photocopied and sold the copies across the neighbourhood.

“We went to the SPCA and gave it the money,” says her mother, Lynne Hansen. “It was all her idea. She has an amazing little mind, and so much empathy.”

Even as a preschooler, however, there were signs something “wasn’t quite right”. Amy was emotive, reactive and easily frustrated when she could not convey her feelings. “She was a very independent little girl, not very huggy, very inflexible in her thinking. You felt at a loss because you didn’t know how to help this lovely, curly-haired little girl – it was an awful time.”

Amy was seven when she was diagnosed with autism but Hansen recognised the signs long before then. “She is intelligent, animated, but she struggles to manage herself. She is a perfectionist – if she hasn’t got a clear pathway from start to finish where she can succeed, she will have a meltdown. So I knew Amy was on the spectrum – I just did not have the diagnostic piece of paper.”

When that piece of paper finally arrived, Hansen says, “It was awful to see her name written next to ASD [autism spectrum disorder], to think she has a difference which is a lifelong neurological disorder. It is hard, really hard, and you get tired as a parent, but you have to push through even if you don’t see the immediate benefit. She is our daughter, our little girl. We know her difficulties but she is the coolest little kid.”

On a rare family holiday to Wellington, eight-year-old Charlize was mesmerised by the World War I exhibition at Te Papa. “She loved it,” says her father, Peter Casey. “She was asking all these questions – she had a real sense of being there.”