(Minghui.org) Greetings, Master and fellow practitioners. I’d like to share my story about my child, who is severely autistic, and how cultivation in Dafa has helped me to endure the challenges of raising him.
In the fall of 2010 when I was 38 years old, I gave birth to twin boys. When they were two weeks old, many challenges began. My sons cried incessantly and needed to be held all day. As soon as we lay them down, they screamed terribly. They were diagnosed with GERD, also known as gastroesophageal reflux disease, which caused their esophagus to burn, and mealtime was always challenging. Their gastrointestinal issues persisted even after we took them to a specialist. Shortly after they ate, they vomited everything back up despite all the painstaking effort I put into feeding them.
Consequently, my sons were only at the 5th percentile of their growth chart. Every feeding session lasted 2 hours, so feeding them each day took 6 hours or longer. The babies hardly slept on the same schedule. When one was asleep, the other was awake. As a result, my husband and I took shifts watching over them at night, and we were often sleep-deprived.
One day, when my sons were ten months old, my mother-in-law threw a huge fit at me and stormed out of my house when I asked if we could reschedule our family portrait session for that month. My mother-in-law is the family matriarch, so she easily goes into a rage if things don’t go her way, no matter how trivial the issue may seem. I was accustomed to apologizing to her, so I ran after her that hot summer day. It was 90 degrees outside as I stood on the driveway under the baking sun, begging her to forgive me while she sat inside her car with the air conditioner on. The babies were left unattended in the house for 30 minutes. When I went back inside, I was in a state of despair due to my mother-in-law’s constant abusiveness towards me. From that moment on, I wanted nothing but “peace,” so I began searching for ways to find it.
Earlier that year my parents told me that my two younger brothers had started practicing Falun Dafa. So, during Labor Day weekend in 2011, my youngest brother and mom flew in from out of town to teach me the Falun Dafa exercises. Although I did the exercises and read the book Zhuan Falun, I did not understand what cultivation was about. My daily challenges increased. I had to take care of my twin boys, my older daughter, my work, and the construction of our new home. By February 2013, I could no longer take the pressure, so I decided to cultivate in Falun Dafa sincerely. I started anew by reading the Fa teachings and woke up early every morning to do the exercises. My thirst to gain the Fa grew, and I felt a sense of peace whenever I read the Fa. In six months, I read all of Master’s Fa Conference Teachings even though I had little time.
When the twins were nearing their 3rd birthday, one of my sons, son B (the younger one), was diagnosed with autism. My husband and I were unfamiliar with autism, but we gradually learned more about it in the years to come. Autism is a neuro-developmental disorder with deficits in social communication and interaction with others, and it also affects sensory input processing to things such as noise, lights, touch, or smell. People with autism can also exhibit repetitive behaviors.
Changes in routine, lack of sleep, hunger, and constipation often triggered my son’s aggressive behavior. His physical aggression became severe when he was about 4 and a half years old. He bit me so hard one time that the flesh on my forearm nearly came off. In anger, I raised my hand to slap him, but at that moment I remembered Master’s Fa, “We have said, however, that as a practitioner one should not fight back when being punched or insulted...” (Lecture Four, Zhuan Falun) I immediately lowered my hand. When I took a second glance at my forearm, the heaped-up flesh punctured with his teeth marks had retracted back into my arm.
In 2017, when my son was 6 and a half, his physical aggression escalated severely. He attacked and injured me daily. His aggression ranged from ripping my hair like pulling Velcro from my head to digging his nails into my skin and peeling it off like wood shavings. When I brushed his teeth at night, he would headbutt my face and bite my fingers, which bled and swelled up. He also kicked me directly in the eye several times, causing me to see flashing lights. He headbutted my backbone when I washed the dishes. He often covered his ears and cried loudly, as if the noise in his head was causing him pain. He would smash his head into the wall, creating large holes everywhere in our house, and my husband had to repair them every night when he came home from work.
That summer, I signed him up for camp, but 30 minutes after I dropped him off, I received a phone call from the camp counselor asking me to pick him up. Several children suffered torn shirts and bruises, and he scratched the camp counselor. When I took my son for a haircut, he ripped two fistfuls of hair from a 13-month-old girl’s head. Her high-pitched crying had triggered his aggression.
He caused terror everywhere we took him, so we became housebound and could no longer take him anywhere except for school. My husband and I had to take turns running our errands, as one of us needed to stay home with our three children. When we went to work, my parents-in-law helped watch the children. We could not go out together, including shopping, eating at restaurants, or attending our other two children’s activities, let alone go on vacation. Our restrictive lifestyle created a lot of tension for my husband and I. Fortunately, studying the Fa and reading experience sharings on Minghui helped me immensely. Our daughter is five years older than her brothers, so when she got older, she helped us to babysit, which eased our tight schedule tremendously.
From Dafa’s principles of Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance, I thought I should be more tolerant of my son’s behavior and that my karma likely caused him to abuse me this way. I finally enlightened that this understanding wasn’t quite right. No matter what I did to him in our past lives, I am still his mother in this lifetime, and our relationship should conform to the traditions of this human level. He cannot keep attacking me like this. After I realized this, his physical aggression towards me subsided a great deal, although he still had outbursts at times.
When the pandemic started in 2020, I severely injured my left knee that summer from chasing after him to get him back inside the house. He was almost ten years old then. I had to use crutches for three weeks. The unbearable pain limited my ability to maneuver around, as I could not put any weight on my leg. My physical limitation made me very dispirited. I had a good cry that day. Afterward, I looked within and found my attachments to wanting to work only on Dafa projects and not look after my autistic son as well as I should have. When I wasn’t monitoring him, my son damaged many things around the house, which upset my husband immensely since he was the one who had to repair them all. These incidents included water damage to our ceiling and walls because my son dumped a large amount of water onto the upstairs bathroom floor.
After looking inward and finding my shortcomings, I looked my son in the eye one day, and I silently and sincerely said to him, “I’m not angry at you, and I don’t know what our relationship was in our past lives, but you are my son in this lifetime, so I will take good care of you.” He stared back at me with his adorable eyes and a loving smile on his face, as though he had heard every word I said. My compassion for him finally emerged, and his attitude toward me became much more positive. He rarely hurt me after that. From then on, I paid more attention to his needs. When he needs me, I put everything down and attend to him.
In the summer of 2021, our house almost caught on fire. The sound of the vacuum cleaner in the basement is very soothing to my son, so he often turns it on for hours. One day, the motor burned out from excessive use, and it caused black smoke to spew throughout the house. Several fire trucks showed up. The fire chief pointed out many items that sat close to the vacuum. He said if any of those items had caught fire, our entire house would have quickly burned down. Miraculously, only a small section of the basement carpet was burned. I know that Master protected us. Thank you, Master! However, due to the toxic smoke, we could not stay in the house and had to live in a hotel for four and a half months while our home was cleaned and restored. Fortunately, we had excellent home insurance coverage, so the entire restoration was fully covered. However, the cost was a staggering $350K, as practically everything in our home had to be cleaned or replaced.
That year, school bus companies everywhere were facing shortages of bus drivers, but amazingly each of our three children received special bus pickups at the hotel, and we did not have to drive any of them ourselves. During that time, I also potty trained my son and finally got him out of diapers when he was 11 years old. Ever since my son was little, he had difficulty falling asleep and often woke up in the middle of the night and roamed the house. During our stay at the hotel, he slept with me. Every morning I woke up to send righteous thoughts globally and did the five exercises near him. My son slept peacefully and soundly. He was also well-behaved during the day.
Last summer, when my son was almost 12, I took the training wheels off his bike and taught him how to ride without it. It was painful for my back and my arms, as I had to support his weight while he leaned his bike on me. We went around the entire neighborhood like that, which was a one-mile walk. We did this every week. One day in mid-November, I took my hands off his bike and held my breath as I watched him ride away from me. It was a huge moment of achievement. My husband doubted that our son would ever be able to ride his bicycle without the training wheels or be out of his diapers, but with perseverance, both milestones were finally achieved.
My husband and I are now in our early 50s, our daughter is 18, and the twins are almost 13, yet it still feels like we are raising a toddler who needs constant care. Although his behavior has improved significantly, our autistic son still needs to be wiped after a bowel movement, be told when to sleep, accompanied when playing outside, be showered in the evening, and have his teeth cared for before bedtime. Balancing time between caring for my autistic child and my family, working a regular job, working for the Epoch Times, and doing Fa study regularly has always been challenging.
Some people find our situation pitiful and sad, but over my ten-plus years of cultivation, it was actually my son who has helped me let go of many attachments. I would not have persevered in getting up early to send righteous thoughts and do all five exercises if it were not for my son. The sleepiness was painful to overcome at first, but with persistence, it became easier and easier to wake up. Now, even if I’ve only slept three or four hours, I can still wake up to send righteous thoughts and do all the exercises. This is extremely important because doing all the exercises regularly has given me the stamina to keep striving forward in my cultivation. My son also helped me easily let go of attachments, such as mall shopping and lunches with friends, since I was not able to go places unless I had a babysitter for him.
With the guidance of Master’s teachings and the help of my son, I was also able to remove some selfish thoughts. There was an instance when I put my son on the school bus and waved goodbye to him as the bus drove away; my heart felt relieved, for I could then do my work for the next six and a half hours in peace. Later, I realized that this thought was not kind. I did not exhibit a heart of compassion, but a selfish one instead. I should not be moved, no matter what my circumstances were. After correcting my thoughts, my mind no longer became disturbed whether my son went to school or stayed at home. I’ve been trying to apply this state of mind to all of my other daily activities.
My husband and I have been married for 23 years. He is not a practitioner but is usually very mild-mannered and easygoing. Before I began practicing, I was the dominant one in our relationship. However, after I obtained the Fa, everything turned around, and he became more dominant. Initially, he even opposed my reading the Fa to our children. I couldn’t take his new attitude and often fought back. When we argued, he would yell, and his words shot at me like a machine gun. I even wanted to leave the secular world to cultivate in a monastery, as I found living with my husband too difficult. Gradually, I understood that I needed to get rid of my attachment to self-interest. I learned not to be extreme in my words or actions and tried to be considerate of his needs. Over time, without my realizing it, his attitude gradually changed, too.
Some days when I have difficulty overcoming a test, my husband says, “Remember: Falun Dafa is good” or “use Dafa’s wisdom” and “have compassion.” One night, I was looking for our older twin son, Son A, to study the Fa. When I entered my room, I found him sitting on the floor, already reading. I looked over and saw my husband sitting on the bed. He said, “I told him to read the Fa now, so we’ll have time for our activities later.” Last summer, I told my husband that I would sign up Son A for Minghui summer camp. He was upset and said, “So you’re making all the decisions then? We’re not going to discuss it?” I just looked at him but did not argue. I'd already told him about it, but he was still not happy. I just held onto the thought, “He’s going to go.” The following day, he said to me, “We need to get our son a cell phone.” I asked why, and he replied, “How are we going to get in touch with him when he’s at Minghui camp?”
I have come to understand why cultivating among everyday people is the fastest and best way to remove attachments. Some days we are met with more challenges than others, but every day there are opportunities for us to cultivate. When I remember that I’m a practitioner, the situation usually improves quickly. I feel very blessed to have obtained the Fa when I did, for without the Fa guiding me, I don’t think I could have endured the hardship of raising a child with autism as severe as my son’s. Dafa has given me a different perspective on life.
The Fa helps make everything more manageable. Master has also been watching over me at all times. Last year, within ten months, I nearly got into seven car accidents. With Master’s protection, I was not injured. I feel regretful that Master had to endure so much for me. I know I have many attachments to remove. I will strive to study the Fa more and work harder to improve my cultivation state to be worthy of Master’s merciful salvation.
Thank you, Master, for your guidance all these years!
(Presented at the 2023 Mid-US Fa Conference)