(LAID-BACK ELECTRONIC MUSIC) - My son has autism and global developmental delay. A lot of my inspiration comes from wanting to provide the best for him. If I was his age ` like, 5 years old, like, what would I have wanted? It's really changed me in a way that has opened my eyes. A lot more dads need more empowerment. That's where I got the idea from. Like, why don't we have, like, a support group? I just feel like a lot of the dads get left out of the picture, and that's one thing that I wanna help champion ` is that we're still here. And that's how ASD Dads started. (INTRIGUING MUSIC) www.able.co.nz Copyright Able 2024 I'm a master at making the bed, guys. - Taught by the master. - I would say the hardest moments are definitely the mornings. Me and Jane start at 9am, so trying to get Storm ready in that time is.... Yeah, it all depends on what happened the night before, and trying to get him to bed is a mission. Yeah, Storm's spent... the last two days, we've had to keep him home. - He has this leaky ear in the right ear. I think it's causing him a lot of pain. But he can't tell me. He can't tell us. Yeah. He went to bed really late. - We just hope he wakes up. - Storm. Wake up, son. We've got school. Go shower? Go school? - Come shower. (STORM WHINES) Come on. Shower. (STORM WHINES) I'll probably just try again later. I noticed a change in Storm from when he was born to about 2 years old. He was real smart. Like, he was walking early, talking, saying words quite early. And then there was just a shift. Like, I noticed one day he stopped making eye contact. And then the day care said, 'I think you guys need to get your son checked.' - When she told me, I got offended. I was just like, 'No, there's nothing. Like, he's fine. He's only 2.' And then, yeah, we went for the assessment. - She just explained to us that he's actually quite severe autism, and he also has global development delay. - I was shocked. I was... Yeah, I cried. - We started crying. - Yeah, we cried. - And we just, like, hugged each other and just broke down. - Yeah. I think the first thought was, um... why? Why my son? Like, why do I have an autistic child? And then I kind of thought, like, what did I` or what went wrong? Or what did I do wrong? - We just put our heads together and knew we got this. We got our son for life, and we just started from scratch about how we're gonna move forward now. A lot of what we do now is based around my son. Time is ticking. - Babe, I'm jumping in. - Wait. (STORM GRIZZLES, WHINES) - You can do it. You can do it. (STORM GRIZZLES) (SIGHS) Not now. (STORM CRIES) Bud, come on. 'He has to express himself when he's angry.' He'll either self-harm or start just picking up stuff and just throwing it. Yeah, like, he has to go through it to calm down. - A lot of the general public just think, 'Man, your kid's naughty,' or 'You're useless parents. Control your child.' We're gonna be late. - No, I'm gonna be early. - Come. With my daughter, she's not on the spectrum, so she's a lot easier to be disciplined. Those are probably the two misconceptions is that they're just real naughty, or you're just a useless parent ` like, you don't know how to control your kid like that. (STORM WHINES) (WHINING CONTINUES) SOFTLY: It's all right. It's all right. Uh... (SNIFFS) No phone. - Hi, Mum. Um, are you at home? I'll bring Storm over to you, because he's not budging. He's not having a shower. He's not doing nothing. OK. Yeah. OK, 10 minutes. See you soon. Bye, Mum. Mum will come here. I'm always late, really. Always late! (LAUGHS) I work in retail, and then I go to work, like, all flustered, and then I wanna cry. - Where's Bubba? - Hi, Bubba! - Jane's mum, Whiti, she's really helpful, gives us a break as well, cos it can get quite tough. - They can come to me for anything, ring me for anything. Because they know I'll turn up, and I'll be there for them. Are we ready? - Yeah, we're ready to roll. - They try and implement routines for Storm so it doesn't upset him too much. Ta. Shoes. Go get your shoes. Let's go. (CHUCKLES) Good boy. - Bye. - See yas. - Bye, Storm. Bye, Tier 2 Storm. - CHUCKLES: Yes. So, they've just got to stay on their guard all the time, you know, make sure things are always, always the same, that there's not too much changes for storm. He likes a routine. - Starting the ASD Dads, I always had a thought of starting it, because I didn't know of any support groups. And it's harder to understand when someone hasn't been in that sort of space. Yeah, just wanted to say thank you guys for coming out today and coming through to ASD Dads. We started ASD Dads for two reasons. The first reason is because we love our kids. And the second reason is that we wanna be better for others. Sometimes, I'd meet people, and they'd have their autistic kid, and we're just having the longest conversation. That's where I got the idea. Like, why don't we have, like, a support group? I really wanted to start it from home, but I just feel like a lot more dads empowerment. - When I found out, and then I kind of look back, if I would have known, I would have... changed my approach. Yeah. - It is scary, because you don't know about it. For some dads, they kind of shy away from it. And sometimes it's just the mum that kinda carries the thing and the dad doesn't understand. - You know, trying to navigate not just the family space, but also the church space as well, which is quite difficult to navigate sometimes. And trying to make our church understand, cos I think that's one of the misconceptions, eh. You know, they think that it's a sin of, you know, things of the past, eh? - Those days of how we were raised, it's long gone. - Mm. - And I think it's like, we lived through that era, but then now it's... We can't raise our kids the same way that we were raised. - Yeah. - But I think we just got to be one of those groups where we have to stand our ground and say, like, you gotta accept autism in our community. Mm. - Let us pray. Father God, we give you glory and praise. We thank you, Lord, for this opportunity to share and to be vulnerable, Lord. We pray, Lord, for blessings upon our families, but most importantly, our children. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. - ALL: Amen. - JORDAN: Keep up the good work, eh? - See you, mate. - That's great. - WHITI: Over here. No, hop in the back. In the back, please. Yes. Good boy. Put your belt on. Great. So, we're going to Hayman Park in Manukau City. Because our house is so small ` it's only a two bedroom ` so it's good for him that we get out during the day as it's just more room for him. I think it's just harder on my other grandchildren, because we always succumb to what we need to be doing for Storm. It's always gonna be a guessing game. Do you want a drink? Are you hungry? (STORM FUSSES LOUDLY) What's the matter? What's the matter? Because, obviously, he's non-verbal. Any way of communication would be awesome. - Come on. - Come on. - Yes! - There's your one. 'For him, it's sound. 'Like certain things he'll go to on YouTube and just watch the same thing continuously. 'And it's building things and just watching them spiral down, 'whether it's pushing something down, watching a marble go down ` 'so as long as he's got something that can fall, he loves it.' We could be here for ages just watching him do this. (LAID-BACK ELECTRONIC MUSIC) Storm, we're going soon. Do you wanna go? 'You can't push him. You can't hurry him. So I've learnt now keep him moving you.' Yeah, I'll pull you. 'Keep him happy.' We're going to go this way. 'Get to the car. We're good to go. 'Patience. Patience is a biggie.' This way. - Starting the ASD Dads was meant to just be a dad thing. And then after that first meeting, we realised one of our biggest struggles is not having anywhere to take our kids. - Does he have the phone while he's doing his haircut? - Yeah. Some of the feedback we get from parents is they're not sure where to take their kids for haircuts. So we ran our first family event ` free haircuts for our kids. We're almost there. (STORM WHINES) - Here. Sit up. - Up, up. - Won't be long, Bubba. You're gonna have a bald patch if you keep moving like that. - Unless you hold him. Do you wanna hold him? - Yeah, I can hold him. Almost there. Almost there. (STORM GRIZZLES, WHINES) OK, OK, OK, OK, OK, OK, OK. Watch your head. Here. - Like, some days he's OK, but today he just wants to run. But it could be the noise or, like, even just the vibration. (HAIR CLIPPERS BUZZ) We learned that we had to learn Storm's world. We need to learn how we can help him, and we've tried things like eating on the ground with him or, like, now we're quite lenient with him. If he wants to eat on the couch, like, we sorta like` we pick and choose nowadays. - Yeah. - Like, whereas before, we were like, no, bring him back to the table, bring him back. And, yeah, for us now, it's learning his world. - Yay! - Oh, to be honest, I didn't really know what speech therapy was until I had a chat with Tami. How are you? - Good. Good to see you. Thank you. - Nice to see you too. - Yes, you too! - We've always been told, like, it's something that needs to be set up through our funders or through the government. But I was quite lucky that I met Tami, and, yeah, she offered us that scholarship. - See you guys. Jane, it's so good to meet you. - Bye. Thanks, Tami. - Acorn Trust gave us 12 weeks of speech therapy. - I think that Jordan and I actually got connected through mutual, you know, organisations on LinkedIn. He was organising his Pasifika Dads group, and I reached out to him. And so we got talking about the lack of support that he's had for his son. And now his son, Storm, is working with Jess, one of our speech therapists. - JESS: Uh-oh. - The first thing I noticed Jess done was she was real intentional with what she was trying to teach them. - Whee! - She exaggerated a lot of her energy and her words. - Uh-oh. It's broken. - Oh, they're talking like him. - Let's fix it. - And real repetitive with what she was doing. - Crash! - It wasn't once or twice; it was like 20 times or 30 times, just focusing on those words. - Oh, it's broken. I know sometimes a lot of our play seems really repetitive. We do, like, a verbal routine like this ` something really easy, usually with them, vocalisations rather than words, cos that's what Storm's usually sort of communicating with. But it's those first steps to building language. Crash! - That's one of our main goals ` is for Storm to be able to speak. You can see, like, the progress he's had in, like, four sessions, and he's so more vocal... - No! - (GASPS PLAYFULLY) No! - ...making all these sound effects. It's cool to see. Like... It's, like, hard to watch it. - I know, cos why is he not doing this at home? (LAUGHS) - Never seen him like this. We were just trying not to cry most of the time, because we've never seen our son interact with another person like that besides us two or our mothers. So, yeah, we were just trying not to cry. - (GASPS PLAYFULLY) Bye, duck. - One of the biggest challenges is that there isn't public funding available for therapies. - Goodbye. Time to go in the car. - Goodbye. - Even though Storm has a diagnosis, that doesn't come with any particular package of support, so his learning is not happening as quickly as it could if he had ongoing therapies like he's having now in speech therapy. (HIP-HOP MUSIC) - My first experience with applying for funding was needs assessment. I didn't realise how important it was and not knowing that that's actually, like, the backbone to your funding for the next three years. Like, trying to navigate through the system was a pain. The more that we progress with ASD Dads, the more we're starting to learn how big the issue is. A lot of our families are just trying to stay on top of the rent, stay on top of their bills. So trying to pick up forms and do all the things required to even get close to the funding, it's a... it's a nightmare. - Jordan's making this whole space accessible to all and reducing the divide between what some people have access to and others don't. Ultimately, that just means that everyone has access to the support that they need. One, two, three. Cheese. (LAIDBACK MUSIC) Dear Diary, my move to Summerset has been quite the page turner. Sally wants me on the croquet team, but Beth says mahjong's where all the fun is at. Mahjong! Yeah! I can hear Barry's choir from here. (CHOIR SINGS) And Kenneth's passionate about getting everyone's heart rate up. But Molly and I opted to do a whole lot of nothing today. A wonderfully underrated pastime. - Sweet. Yeah. Thanks for coming. Um... This meeting's just to plan our charity run. The original name I was thinking of was, like, Move for Autism, cos some people might wanna, like, ride their bike or... Half of the money we want to fund raises so that our kids can get into speech therapy. That's one part, and then the second part is so that we have some funds for our family events. - Yeah, yeah. - Just something on the side for those. - 28th of April, we have a fundraiser, Move for Autism. We just wanna act now and fundraise. We don't wanna wait for government. Like, we want to take charge of it and take initiative. And then the goal is to unite all the other autism organisations. I think this would be, like, the first event, but with, like, two... how it's gonna be ASD Dads and Acorn. - All right. Sweet. I think we're good. - Sweet. - I feel like I'm walking away with lots, but, um... (LAUGHTER) Does anyone else...? Do you have some? (LAUGHS) I really do, but it's all right. I got you. I got you. All right. Cool, man. - OK, so, our workout for today is 15 hang cleans, OK, as power cleans or squat cleans. Drop it down. Have a quick breather, complete that last dead lift, and then straight into those hang power cleans. Focus on keeping your core engaged while doing the warm up. OK, working through the movements. - The gym for us is just, like, a space to just express ourselves and... just something, like, gets our minds off everything that's going on. Keeps us fit as well. I think that's really important, especially if you have kids like ours. It does get, like, quite hard. It can take a toll on our marriage, so we have to make sure we set time aside for us as well. - What's harder than this? - You're supposed to run back and then come through. - Yay! (APPLAUSE) Cartwheel. (GENTLE ACOUSTIC GUITAR MUSIC) - So, I'm just building the house for Storm, so we can practice what we learned from our speech therapy session. Knew I should have been a builder. There was a part where Jess was doing open and close and splash. Those are the three takeaways from that session. So we're hoping that he's gonna play around with the doors on this house. - (CHUCKLES) That's so funny. Close. Open. (OBJECTS CLUNK) - Now break it. - (LAUGHS) - It just showed us that he's capable. Like, he is actually capable of... He could speak one day. (SOFT, INTRIGUING MUSIC) - We're just setting up for the day. I'm feeling pumped. We had 749 registered adults. That's not including children. Yeah, and we also have, like, rugby teams coming. Everyone's supporting because of the cause ` autism. Cos there's so many Polynesian autistic families. It's just` No one knows about it, which is sad. But they're gonna know about it. (CHUCKLES) They're about to know about it. Nah. (LAUGHS) Here's the main man. - I think we just didn't expect the community to come together. how it has. I think from Monday, we started getting, like, 100 registrations per day. So we had to adapt. Like, we had to get more portaloos yesterday. We had to hire that marquee. That wasn't in the plan. - There's a family who's participating today ` we've never met them before. They just signed up and got into it. Hi. - ALL: Hi. - Our nephew has autism, so we're just here to show our support, especially to the parents. - Today I'm going to be a cheerleader mainly and helper in general. We are set. It's so cool. - Hello? You guys are OK? - Yeah, we're just trying to find a spot. - OK. Cool tutus. (INDISTINCT CHATTER) - Hi! - Hello. - There's not much out there family-wise, community-wise until, you know, we joined the groups and stuff. So, I'm Tongan. There's no Tongan word for autism at all. So it's called a mahaki, which is like a disease that they kinda interpret that into. (LAID-BACK ELECTRONIC MUSIC) - Hi! My son! Aww. Good to see you! Hi, Dad. - Haere mai. Thank you so much, guys, for dressing up. - I just want to welcome everyone here on behalf of ASD Dads and Acorn Trust. But we'd just like to thank you guys for coming out today and just advocate that today is all about our kids. (UPBEAT MUSIC) I'm quite lucky to have Jane. She takes a lot of the hard work, gives me time to sort this sort of stuff out. It's taken a lot. Like, I'm still working 9 to 5. To do this with no funding, it's just all been done outside of, like, work hours. We've been able to fundraise about 15K. It feels like a dream. Just started in my garage at home. Yeah, I feel like I can relax now and just walk for autism. (CHEERING) - Oh, you can do it! (CHEERING) - A lot of the families we impact, like, a lot of parents get real emotional when they're saying thank you, and they're just really grateful that we've been able to provide these sort of spaces. That wouldn't have happened if Storm wasn't on the spectrum. I feel like it was a blessing in disguise. I'm really proud of him, especially when he does things on his own. We would hope, like Storm could be able to live by himself ` that would be a cool thing and cook for himself.