‘The note that called me a bad parent’: How struggling dad bonded with autistic son

A FATHER struggling to communicate with his autistic son says his neighbour’s shaming letter was the last straw.

Morag and Keith Stuart with their son Zac.

GROWING up has been a battle for autistic 11-year-old Zac Stuart, and his parents have at times been driven to despair.

As a little boy, he was petrified of crowds and would throw a giant tantrum if his routine was disrupted.

“I didn’t know how to communicate with him or make him happy,” his father Keith told news.com.au. “It was heartbreaking.”

But the lowest moment for Keith and wife Morag came when a neighbour delivered a humiliating note to their home in Somerset, South West England, when Zac was seven.

“This woman in her late 50s or 60s brought a letter to my wife saying we were failing as parents,” said Keith, 45. “She’d seen Zac having meltdowns.

“She didn’t know he was on the spectrum and felt able to do that. That symbolised for us the difficulties. The hardest thing as a parent is the judging, and the looks.”

Keith initially struggled to communicate with his autistic son.

When Keith and Morag had a second child, Albie, two years after Zac, things got even harder.

The family home was filled with tension, with Zac unable to sleep and scared of loud noises and crowds.

Keith has since written a fictionalised account based on the family’s experience, A Boy Made of Blocks, with the intention of dispelling some of the myths around autism.

“I wanted to portray autism not as a problem but as a different way of looking at the world,” he says. “It’s not a deficiency, it’s an alternative. The way he sees the world is fascinating.”

That’s not to say Keith and Morag didn’t struggle. Despite advances in understanding autism, learning to cope with their son’s differentness — and the world’s reaction to him — was a steep learning curve.

“Even when he was a toddler, we got the impression he was slightly different,” says Keith. “His vocabulary was really limited. When he was two or three, he only had ten words while his peers had 60, 70, 80.

“He had lots of difficulties socialising, he was really scared in loud places.”

Nevertheless, the first doctor the couple saw ran some tests and decided Zac didn’t have autism. This surprised and concerned his parents, who couldn’t conceive what else could be wrong. “He’d started school and was terrified at all the confusion,” says Keith. “He used lots of stock phrases we had to decode. If he wanted a peanut butter and cheese sandwich — which was pretty much all he ate — he’d say ‘butter cheese’.

“We were really worried he wasn’t getting the nutrition he needed. If we tried anything new, he’d have a breakdown. If we took him to the shops and it wasn’t planned, he’d have a meltdown.

“We really had to fight for his diagnosis.”

Keith, 45, says the hardest part was dealing with judgment from other people, particularly a neighbour who handed them a note about their ‘failed’ parenting.

Journalist Keith says it was computer games that helped him and others bond with Zac.

Zac, right with little brother Albie, socialises better when he doesn’t have to face people.

The father of two, who works long hours as games editor at The Guardian, admits the challenges took their toll on the family, especially when Albie came along two years after his brother. “There was a lot of tension in the house,” he says. “I definitely felt unprepared. We weren’t sleeping much. Zac wasn’t sleeping. We were exhausted most of the time. I don’t think I was coping really well.

“Autism can be, not destructive, but invasive.”

That’s when the writer had the breakthrough that is at the centre of his book. Zac had always been interested in the computer games his dad had lying around the house, so one day, Keith introduced him to the wildly popular PlayStation game Minecraft, in which users build their own virtual worlds.

“It was like a light switch going on,” he says. “It was instrumental in understanding Zac.

“It’s effectively a building set, like Lego. It’s a landscape with a beautiful childish aesthetic. You can do what you want, there’s no one telling you what to do. It really appeals to people on the autism spectrum. There’s total freedom.”

Keith’s hit book about bringing up an autistic child.

Keith says he feels more capable now, and has adapted to making timetables, providing clear boundaries and phasing in change for his son. The clear scheduling has even helped him manage his own “chaotic” life, and he hopes to revisit Zac’s story when he is a teenager.

The maturing father hopes his book shows how computer games can have cultural significance, just like books and movies. “Video games are a place to experiment and play like the park, it’s not just shooting aliens but being creative,” he says.

Minecraft offered Zac a door into an online community in which he can share ideas and socialise without having to cope with face-to-face contact, something he struggles with in the playground at his mainstream school.

“It’s one place where he’s equal to his peers,” says Keith. “It’s his place to invite people into. He’s a leader rather than following.

“I can’t express how important that is to a child.”

Keith Stuart is the author of A Boy Made of Blocks published by Hachette Australia RRP $29.99.

Zac doesn’t have a problem, says his father, just a different way of looking at the world. Through their eyes

Originally published as ‘The note that called me a bad parent’: How struggling dad bonded with autistic son