The Early Years
Mihir Alexander Samuel reached all his developmental milestones on time. His mother Aarti Boaz stressed that she wasn’t exaggerating when she said her son could speak clear words with the correct tenses by the time Samuel turned 11-months old.
“It would be like gone, coming, came - you know he had that right,” Boaz attested. “'Papa gone, Papa coming, Mumma came.’ You know, that sort of difference would be there in his speech. And by the time he was 12 months old, full sentences.”
By his first birthday, Samuel even started trying to spell, and his mother said he’d often argue about how a word should be spelled.
“For example, when I say, 'C for cup,’ he would say, 'K for cup’,” Boaz explained. “And I would say, 'No, it's C,’ so he says, 'K says “kh”, so K is also - can be K for cup.’”
Thus, Samuel demonstrated adequate development in speech and cognitive areas at a very young age.
Aarti Boaz and Mihir Alexander Samuel
A child goes through development in five areas: physical and motor, speech, cognitive, emotional and social, according to Sayee Kumar, who has over 30 years of experience as a therapist. If there is any delay in development in these areas, the child is said to have developmental delay.
The eager mother did all sorts of tests on Samuel as a baby, like the raisin test and bead test, to predict his academic potential and development. According to Boaz, there wasn’t any problem with his grip or anything when he was picking up small objects between two fingers.
By the time Samuel started pre-school, he could already spell a number of words. His mother said he'd talk and argue quite a lot. Naturally, people thought he was some sort of genius.
Laughing, Boaz narrated a story about how Samuel was a very mature kid for his age.
“When he was, I think, in preschool or something, about 2 and a half, the principal went and asked him, 'What do you want?’,” Boaz said. “He was fidgeting in class and she said, 'What do you want,’ and he said, 'I want peace of mind,’ or something like that.”
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He was pretty independent too, according to his mother, who said she had no difficulty with his toilet training, eating or getting him dressed because he was already doing all that by himself.
It didn’t seem like Samuel had any trouble with his early development. Until he came to LKG (lower kindergarten) and everyone found out that he couldn’t write.
“He couldn't grip a pen - a pencil,” Boaz said. “And that kind of started this whole thing of looking at him in another way and saying, 'What's wrong with him?’ Because he could do so many things that other kids could not, and the basic stuff that other kids could, he couldn't. He was sociable, he would talk, but he wouldn't be able to write.”
Thus started Boaz’s doctor shopping. She took Samuel to multiple doctors, pediatricians and psychologists to test and find out what was wrong with him. Unfortunately, it was all in vain; the results were inconclusive.
Mihir's early years
Samuel’s parents realized he had some signs of autism, but not all of them. People suggested that it could be Asperger's and not autism, because he was verbal, social, and academically adept, but simply could not write.
Boaz wasn’t exactly thrilled with the result though. In fact, she was so stressed that it affected her during her pregnancy with her second son at the time.
“I was overwhelmed!” Boaz exclaimed. “I was weeping. In fact, I was pregnant with my second child when this diagnosis came, and then I developed high BP in the last week of pregnancy when all this thing was happening. And I had an emergency C-section and I started hemorrhaging and all that stuff. And it was down to a lot of stress I was going through at that time.”