When our son J was about three years old, he underwent, as scheduled, a Child Developmental Assessment arranged by a Maternal & Child Health Centre under the Family Health Service, Department of Health in Hong Kong. The result was that J was diagnosed with autism, with his intelligence and language ability lagging behind children of his age group by as much as 1 year and 1½ years respectively! Accordingly, the pediatrician concerned and suggested that we should transfer J from the mainstream school that he was attending to a special school that provides the relevant therapy.

In our deep despair, we were luckily offered help by our church, which referred J’s case to educational psychologist Dr Jane Nam for follow-up. Having conducted an integrated assessment of our three-year-old son, Dr Nam warmly said to us, ‘Based on my experience, I can tell that J is not autistic. It is only because his thinking ability is very substantial that he cannot express all his thoughts by language alone, and that makes his language ability appear to be lagging behind.’ Dr Nam’s words brought great comfort and hope to our family. We therefore politely declined the pediatrician’s earlier suggestion of changing schools and instead let J start to receive the tailor-made professional training provided by Dr Nam.

As J gradually grew and continued to receive Dr Nam’s professional training, he showed progressive enhancement in the multiple skills that he possessed. In terms of academic achievement, he ranked as low as No.40 plus in a class of 60 students in Primary One, but rose to No.16 in Primary Six. Subsequently, he managed to enrol in Form One of a Band One English secondary school. He had a wide range of interests. He was fond of reading, covering all sorts of books. He also liked playing the chess of Go, and represented his school in inter-school Go tournaments. In physical exercise, he loved the group sport soccer and was a district representative player in the Youth League of the Hong Kong Football Association.

Time flies. In the blink of an eye, J is now a college student in Civil Engineering Year Four, studying hard for his future career. We simply cannot imagine what it would be like if he had not received Dr Nam’s professional assessment years ago, had not subsequently undergone the tailor-made training that she provided, or had instead followed the pediatrician’s advice and placed him in a special school. How would he then have grown and developed?

We thank God for letting J and our family have the timely assistance mentioned above. We pray that God would make the most use of Dr Nam’s professional knowledge and associated training skills to help even more children in need and their parents.

With compliments from J’s parents,
Paula and Simpson