Ionit Sabatello: Navigating Autism, A Journey of Strength and Acceptance

Welcome to Why Not Me the World? Podcast hosted by
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people who will inspire and show that you are not
alone in this world. Hopefully you gain more awareness, acceptance,
and a better understanding for autism around the world. Hi,
I'm Tony Mantor. Welcome to Why Not Me the World.
Today's guest is Unique Sabotage. She's originally from Israel living
in London now. She has two children, one which is autistic.
Welcome to the show.
I appreciate you, thank you really, thank you so much
for having me here.
Oh it's my pleasure. So you have two children, one
girl that's neurotypical and one son that's artistic. Can you
tell us a little bit about him and then tell
us how you came to find that he's autistic.
So, Danielle at that time was fifteen months, he was
very young, So yeah, so but that actually, to be honest,
when we arrived here and he hardly talked, yeah, and
it took us a lot of time. It took him
a lot of time until we understood him. So the
fact that we came from Israel was an element of
delay there because they thought they kept on telling us, Oh,
he's bilingual, So that's probably the reason. But yeah, I
felt that there is something else. And to be honest,
his dad and I are not together now because that
caused a lot of issues as well. When I knew
that there's something there that is not quite right, and
I thought to get some assessment in place, and I
fought for to have someone to see him and support
him because the first few years. He was diagnosed only
in twenty twenty, so he was seven years old.
I can understand that completely. Speech is difficult when you
move from one area to another area in the same country,
but when you move from one country to another country,
that does make it a little more difficult and a
little bit harder to diagnose, probably.
I think especially with the first born, because as a
new man, you don't know what you don't know, simple
as that, like you don't know when is the right
time for things to happen. And even though doctors can
say one thing, you say, okay, but maybe my child
has his own time. You know, we're all different, like
even as adults, we do things in different times and
the move as well perhaps affected the assessment. And yeah,
and it's it's interesting. Can I ask you a question
as well, to him, if that's okay? Sure from your
experience with my situation, with our situation here, the dad
refused to acknowledge the fact that there is something wrong
with his son, Like even even after being diagnosed, he thought, like,
it's not real. Probably there is a mistake or whatever.
Is it something that you see often with your with
the people that come to your show.
Actually, most of the men that I've spoken with have
dealt with it and figured it out and move forward.
I've taught with one that it took him a long time.
He pointed fingers, said it wasn't his fault, but then
he ultimately realized that he was the problem because he
wasn't accepting it. Most parents, unfortunately, are put in a
situation that they've never been put in before, and because
there's no guidebook to go with, they question each other,
they argue, they fight over what's happening, and then ultimately
it can cause a huge problem with their marriage and
mostly divorce. I think the divorce rate is about eighty
percent in the autistic community.
Wow. Interesting, Yeah, I think also I heard somewhere that
autism actually at some cases is inherited through the dad
or the masculine lineage there. And I think for a
lot of parents, dads especially, it's hard for them to
think perhaps something within them has similar traits and they're yeah, anyways,
it's interesting.
Interesting, It is interesting. There's a lot of things out there.
Some are true, some are just well, no, so true.
I guess. So, how was your son in school? Did
he have any issues that he had to deal with?
How did that go for him the first.
Few years in school? And I don't know if it's
the same in the States. Here they start extremely early.
When they turned four, that's the year that they will
start reception year, and then year one, year two and
so on. When he started, it felt for me that
he's too young in his like he's too immature to
start it. Because here they have the school uniform, it's
very rigid, even though it seems like very friendly and
still nursery sort of environment, but it's still you have
rules already very early. So first year was fine, it
was adjusting as everyone else. But then when they started
year one with more curriculum. It didn't seem like he's
into it. He was trying his best, but it didn't
seem like he was into it. But what more was
upsetting There was the social element.
Okay, so how did that affect him?
So the first ever conversation that I had with the specialist,
she told me that he has social communication disorder. So
until we actually realized that, it was very hard for
him to interact with other kids. He couldn't understand their
facial expressions. First of all, he couldn't understand their intentions.
And he has a strong sense of justice. So if
someone does something that in his opinion, in his perspective perception,
it is not okay, it would be horrendous. It will
be a ward like declaration on war.
Yeah, I've heard of situations like that before.
So unfortunately, socially, he had a lot of issues to
begin with and it escalated and then I think year two.
So did school get any better form over a period
of time.
So it was three years in school and it was
extremely stressful for him, a lot of anxiety, a lot
of problems, and only in year three that's when we
had the diagnose for autism. Then he started to receive
some support and one to one. And bear in mind
it was COVID time, so when he went back to school,
but when he wasn't at school at all, he was flourishing. Yeah,
but I didn't do any homework with him at home.
But then when he came back to school at the
beginning of returning from COVID, it was small school, so
only kids with special needs would return to school. And
that's when it went well for him. He received support
and it was smaller class. And now he's receiving just
like more assistant.
But so did that help him?
He became better socially, so he's more interacting with others.
And you know, he has dyslexia as well, so it's
like a mess there with writing and reading. But at
least he's progressing, and at least he's he feels that
he's progressing, and that's that's the best thing there.
Yeah, yes, that's for sure, that is the best thing.
So how is his interaction skills now? Have they gotten better?
He will interact with adults. He will be very happy
to tell you science facts and dinosaurs facts. And it's
like a radio station. It starts and never ends. With kids,
he wouldn't happily go and interact with other kids. So
he will prefer the home environment rather than to go
let's say, camps or you know, like when they have
school or summer camps. There's not a chance for him
to go there.
Okay, so you mentioned he likes it at home. What
is his dynamic now with his sister? How does that
all fall together?
So he's quite so he's high functioning functioning. He's not.
He doesn't have any special behavior towards outside that can
identify him as different unless you're interacting with him, and
then you can see a little bit difference there. He's
very stubborn and he's in his own world, which is
interesting to see because he has for him everything is
black and white, everything is deterministic, everything is It's hard
for him to be agile, to to to you know,
to accommodate someone else's needs. And she's, on the other hand,
very empathetic. So what what I help them with is
to first of all, have healthy boundaries and second of all,
to communicate to each other what they need. And even
if it's through me, it's okay. When you see them
together outside, they will walk hand in hand. They he
might put a hand on her. They will look like
married couple. They will have conversations, they will talk with
each other. It's beautiful. At home. They will might have
these you know, clashes every now and then, but they
they they grow up with a lot of values in place.
And that's the difference, I think, because there is no
there's no such thing as discipline in my home. It's
not discipline. I'm not disciplining them. I'm showing them, by
role modeling with myself, how to become good people, you know,
so that they can contribute to society with their strengths.
And obviously we all have our own strength. So that's
what I show them, hopefully, and I can see in
their interaction that there is something beautiful there in that connection,
in that interaction as well.
I think that's just great and it seems to be
really working well for you. So how does the mom
fit into this? How do you interact with them?
When my kids were born, I have some tools that
now I've been using more and more, but I had
a way to see what kind of a mom they
required for me to be in order for them to
feel safe, loved, seen, heard, and that they will be
able to cooperate with me, and that was before they
could even talk, you know, especially my son when he
had delay in his speech. There is something amazing with
that connection between us because as an EmPATH, I feel him,
but I also have the tools to know what he
needs for me no matter what happens. Yeah, like he
goes to his tant rooms and obviously there is frustration,
like every child will have, but the way I approach
each one of them is completely different because I know
that my son will need for me the feeling of
home will he will need for me, structure, he will
need for me step by step plan which is also
very masculine, so it's you know, he's a boy, but
also very special needs wise. But also what I saw
that that's what he will require.
For me sure, and that sounds like a truly great
plan and.
Very free spirits. So for me, he brought me into structure, okay,
that I needed to become a person who has structure.
And my daughter, on the other hand, she just wants
me to be part of her team. She she is
a team player. She needs me to be a friend
of hers and to feel that she's belonged to me
in a way that we work together. So while we
have the same activity to do. For my son, I
will just say to him, I will state to him
what happens next and what is expected from him. And
with my daughter, I will maybe use words like could
you help me, please do whatever, or it will be
nice if we can do something together before we go out.
So I'm speaking to them almost in different languages, even
if it's on the same topic. You see what I mean?
Yes, And I really think that's just a great way
to handle it. So how old is your son? Now?
My son is ten, and your daughter, I think she's younger.
Is that correct?
Yes, she's six.
Some artistic people are known to be very literal. Does
that apply to your son as well?
Yes, definitely, yeah, But it's it's funny. I did, I did.
I did try to explain to him, like, if we
are next to other people and he has something to
say about them, that's absolutely fine. But if he can
just use his softer voice, it can be sometimes so
uh yeah, embarrassing. But yes, definitely, the lateral aspect there
is is there.
Yeah, it's always good to be out front and honest,
but sometimes you just have to learn to be just
a little bit diplomatic and that kind of helps things
out a little bit definitely.
And I have to say that I'm encourage my daughter
to say more of her truth as well. So I'm
encouraging her to just pick up her mind, you know,
not to be scared, to say what she thinks in
a way that doesn't hurt anyone else, but just to
have her own boundaries towards things, you know, which I
think it's really important when it comes to safetiness, you know,
in terms of literally body like everyone in the family.
We have like older people that wants to come and
hug or want to come and kiss, and my son
will say no because you stink, or no because or whatever.
My daughter will just say no. Now. In the past,
in the past, she she would shut up, like she
wouldn't say anything. So I told her that it's okay
to say no, and I'm there with her when she
says no. And then one of the family members asked
her why not, and I said, and I said, because
she said no, Like you don't need to explain yourself.
You don't need to excuse yourself. If you say no,
it's no, so's it's again. It's a way to say
the truth, because her truth is that she doesn't want
to receive anything you very much.
So you mentioned family. Do you have family where you're
living now?
Yeah? So no family in London. I have a cousin
that I see everyone in a while. Our friends become
family and I travel back like to visit my family
there at least once a year.
Yeah, that's great. Family is very important, but as you said,
friends become family and they're very important too. So now
that you've seen what your son's developing into and how
he's acting and reacting to things, what do you see
for his future? Where do you think he will be
five years from now, ten years from now? What do
you see or hope to see him doing?
So he wants to have a private island. Okay, he
wants to invent that island. That island. He wants to
work with scientists to bring back dinosaurs. And he saw
he thought, if we can extract DNA cells from their
bones that we already have, maybe we can produce some
kind of tissue and then bring back dinosaurs. So that's
kind of things that he's thinking about. And he has
an amazing brain for planning, so he can he plans
like the machines or he plans the layout of the
island or whatever. I said to him, whatever you do,
and he wants like he has a lot of interests
in geology and science. I said to him, whatever you do,
you don't have to do everything by yourself, right, make
sure you have a big business or a big firm
that hires the best people to work with you. So
I'm trying my best to help him see past his obstacles.
He doesn't see that as obstacles yet. Yeah, but you know,
in order to be scientists at this stage of life,
we need to go to university. We need to have
good records of math and all of these things. And
you know, who knows what will be with him? Hopefully
everything will be fine. So I'm encouraging him to be entrepreneur.
I encourage him to be with that mindset of growth
that you don't need to do everything on your own.
You can have the best team to work with you.
We'll see, we'll see how it goes.
Yeah, so we know he likes geography, dinosaurs. What's his
downtime look like when he's not thinking about anything, doing
anything in particular, just chilling. What's he doing his.
Chilling time will be mostly YouTube learning, a lot of learning.
He loves learning a lot. Okay, he just learned a
lot about World War Two. I don't know why that's
the topic. I think this talk to them about that
in school. So he will do TV time. He would
love to just build stuff, build from magnets, but things
that not require a lot of how do you say
it like? He doesn't like he won't draw something, cut
it and glue it together. That's too much for his
patients level. He doesn't have any patients there. But something
with magnets, for instance, or lego, he will build it.
He will go and build it and create something magnificent there.
Design or not the builder.
That yes, yes, exactly exactly that.
I get that. There's a lot of people out there
that are great designers and can put great things on paper,
but when it comes to building it, they don't want
any part of that.
Yeah, well I can understand him. I come from interior design,
so I was just like, yeah, under the plan, alter
the concept and the you know, the ideas, and then
the builder will do the build. Yeah, that's his downtime.
He loves very much to take showers. Funny enough, okay,
which I'm happy with that, especially when he will start
puberty and teenager years, so it just halms him down.
He really finds it. He will stay sometimes like maybe
forty minutes and just like enjoy the water and it's
quiet time for him to do.
So that's great. Now you mentioned anxiety. It calms him down.
Does he have meltdowns like others have or house his
demeanor that.
Way, Yeah, he used to have a lot. He used
to have quite severe ones and a lot even at
the age of six, he would say to me, I
don't want to leave.
Well, unfortunately, that's not uncommon in the autistic community. Three
out of four diagnosed our boys and that one girl
usually is the one that has some issues because they're
trying to mask it because they want to fit in,
and it can show up in their teenage years. Although
I have heard some boys and men that have the
same issue. So it's something to be very aware of.
Women has a better emotional intelligence in terms of just
speak about emotions and speak about feelings, so that on
its own. Sometimes the ability of a girl to express
herself is big, is better than a boy with a tissim,
both of them with tissm.
Yeah, the reason why females tend to mask it more
is socially they want to fit in, so they mask it,
try and blend in, fit in with their friends. The
only issue is if they don't fit in perfectly, they
start getting bullied. They're going through their hor modal changes.
That's when it can all lead to a greater phase
of depression, and then we really have to watch it
because it can lead to other serious issues.
Do you think they know that they have autism too, Musk,
or do you think they just feel that something is
wrong or different with them?
From the people that I've spoken with, they don't know.
They aren't aware of the word autism, so they just
know something's not right. They know they don't feel right,
they don't fit in properly. They don't exactly know what's
causing it. I've spoken with three or four different people,
one in particular, that did not find out that she
was autistic until she was in her forties. So basically,
she said she lost four decades of her life and
didn't start actually having a life until she hit fifty.
She said that fifties were just a whirlwind and she
has exploded with life from that. So everyone's different everyone
handles it different, but it's very prevalent now for females
to get diagnosed later in life. Well, hopefully now that
he's older, he's grown out of those thoughts and things
have moved out for you.
I was quite scary, but some of the things that
we did. First of all, the assistant in school create
created a massive improvement because having someone there that helps
him to regulate his emotions at least once in now
in one hour to go and just to jump or
to run or to follow like maze with his finger
or something like that, that's already created big improvement for him.
I do with him at home tapping so if you know,
like when you tap on meridian points and release feelings.
So we have a lot of conversations. We call them
private times. Or it will say to me, I have
I have a private conversation to have with you, So
we will go. We will find a quiet place, just
me and him, and he will share with me what
he feels or his thoughts, and we will I will
usually just validate his feelings. I won't try to solve
anything for him. I will just say to him, yeah,
that sounds very scary, or yes it can be very fearful,
or it can be very funny or whatever it is.
I'm there just to acknowledge that whatever he feels is fine.
To feel it, that's right, and that's great that you
have that kind of communication. A lot of people would
love to have that.
Definitely, Yes, yes, it developed, it developed, but I think
it came from when he was very very young, before
he was able to communicate. And again, I knew what
he needs from me as his mom, So I've tried
my best to accommodate that. And yeah, I think I'm blessed.
I think so too. So how would you like to
close this out and give advice to anybody that might
be listening that's starting out and learning about autism for
their children.
I would say, accept things as they are is the
biggest thing that you can do for yourself, because I
think when we try to resist something, or when we
try to deny something, that's when we encounter pain. My
at the beginning of discovering this challenge, I felt a
lot of guilt. I felt maybe I did something wrong,
and I thought, up until now I think I know
where it comes from his autism. But maybe I'm wrong there,
but I took it on myself as if I did
something wrong or I should have realized that sooner and
so on, and I think it's only when I've accepted, Okay,
this is where we are now. There's no point of
looking backwards with regrets. Just focus here and now and
see what is the Karen dynamic, And if I want
to have a different one, how I can create that
one with love and respect and happiness and joy and laughter,
then go for that one. I think the biggest, the
biggest achievement was to just accept that this is my
son and I don't know anything else other than that,
and he's the most amazing person that I met, and
my daughter is the next next to you, and I'm
raising good, good people. That's it. So for me, it's
just accepting them for who they are, accepting the situation
for what it is, and also reach out for help
and support because we don't need to go through anything
on our own. Really. There are so many courses I
took as well, courses and parents' groups and whatever there
is available there out there to first of all, not
feel alone, and second just to have more tools in
your toolkit to deal with everything. Right.
Yeah, yeah, that's good. I'm glad you brought that up,
because this is one of the few interviews that I
haven't brought it up, and you brought it up. Was
the fact that when you started wondering, it was at
your fault. Because I've asked several women, did you go
through that? Because most of them do they go through this?
What did I do? I had one that just was
on just this last Wednesday. I asked her that question.
She's got two autistic children, and she said the first
one she went through that for a while, but then
she put that aside and started moving forward to making
the best life she could for her. And then when
she became pregnant with her second one, she did everything
by the book. If anything was well, this could lead
to this or lead to this, she wouldn't do it.
And she did everything by the book. And her son
that was born within fifteen months, she knew the markers
and she knew the right way that he was autistic
as well. So that was a pretty good, pretty good
statement there.
Yes, Yes, I think most moms have like when the
kids are born, it's like we're receiving a bag of
guilt and we're just carrying it around us constantly, Like
whether we fed them properly, whether we managed to put
them to speak properly, or changed her naphew's properly, or
get them rested properly, or we shouldn't have said that thing,
or maybe we shouldn't have let them do that thing.
And you know, it's full of guilt, full of guilt,
and when you just allow yourself to be the best
terran that you can be and very just to have,
like the best communicator. We said that earlier Tony in
our conversation. It's all about communication, and the communication is
not just with other people always, it's sometimes with ourselves
and just to say, you know what you're doing the
best you can and if you need to deal with something,
you will find the best solution that you can. And
just like to have these breaths to take for a
seconds and then move on, keep on.
Going absolutely well. I have to say, this has been
a great conversation and I've enjoyed it tremendously. So I
want to thank you again for coming on my show.
Yeah, thank you so much, Tony. I really appreciate it.
Enjoy your weekend.
Thanks and you too, thanks for taking the time out
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