Until he was 10 years old, little Mohammed did not speak. “He was screaming, jumping and clenching his fists to express himself, it was his way of communicating,” Malika Iberraken, whose son was diagnosed with “severe autism” shortly before his seventh birthday, told BFMTV.com. A few years later, Malika Iberraken delivers in her book I’m not afraid anymore mommy – published by editions Fayard – “the atypical journey” of his son Mohammed, who, at the age of 17, has just entered the prestigious military school of the Saint-Cyr school.
“I would never have dared to imagine such a fate for him,” admits his mother. “When I was little, my dream was for him to become independent. When some parents dream that their children will succeed in their studies, that they will be able to do the job of their dreams. ‘Would you have believed?’, he asks with a smile on his lips. face, this 46-year-old woman, head of payroll at Blanc-Mesnil (Seine-Saint-Denis).
“Chess was revealing”
“He came from a long way,” acknowledges Malika Iberraken. And with good reason she remembers the little boy who remained silent during his first four years of kindergarten, until he uttered the word “mama” at the age of seven. From his tics, “heavy on a day-to-day basis.” The one who refused to eat, unless they were salmon jars with carrots of a very specific brand.
Today, he sees in this book a way to “help” and “give hope to families” like his:
“C’est vrai que lorsqu’on diagnose a tel handicap à votre enfant, on peut avoir tendance à se dire qu’il n’y a plus d’espoir, que sa vie s’arrête là alors que non, pas forcément. .. on the contrary”.
“Although it was hard, we never gave up, you never have to let go, hold on and go knocking on all the doors,” launches Malika Iberraken, who says that she and her husband have always sought to stimulate Mohammed, by doing he will discover as many things as may be possible.
And that is what will make the difference. Everything changes when Mohammed discovers chess at the age of 10. Through this passion, the child reveals himself. Malika and Karim discover a new side to their son.
“It was revealing, he was hooked right away. He allowed him to find his way and revealed his demand for himself and in everything he does. We noticed that he made a lot of progress and developed things in him that we didn’t suspect. Even today, it is his driving force, ”explains his mother.
Thanks to this trigger, Mohammed gets very good grades when he enters the university. “If we could only have Mohammeds in class, that would be ideal,” we told Malika Iberraken one day at a parent-teacher meeting.
“The weight of administrative battles”
When she evokes these years, this mother of two children describes a permanent “fight”, strewn with many pitfalls, so that her son’s handicap is recognized, and he can integrate the structures that correspond to him: a medical institute (IME) or a class ULIS adapted to the education of disabled students, for example.
“Building a file at the MDPH (Departmental House for the Disabled) is already so complicated, so long. And that is only the beginning”, the forty-year-old develops. “In addition to the weight of the diagnosis and the day-to-day that we can have on our shoulders, we have to fight with the administrations to make sure that we give the best to our son.”
“I do not hide from you that when Mr. Macron was elected president, I had a little hope because I knew that Brigitte Macron was committed to this. My heart really hurts”, reports Malika Iberraken.
She does not hide her disappointment and would like to meet with the First Lady today to discuss the matter.
Before his election in 2017, Emmanuel Macron pledged to make disability one of the priorities of his five-year term. The presidential couple had even received young autistic people at the Élysée to present them with the “autism plan” that they intended to implement. However, in recent months, the closures of psychiatric services have multiplied in the territory.
Last January, two years after the publicized visit of the Head of State to the Saint-Egrève psychiatric hospital in Isère, the Grenoble establishment was forced to close a service. As also happened at the Saint-Maurice de Val-de-Marne hospital in January 2022, or even at the Pontoise hospital last January…
“Maybe things have been done, but today it didn’t happen at my level,” replies the mother, who now plans to open an association. “On the contrary, there are not enough specialized reception establishments… And the fact of pooling structures or companions such as AESH means that today, I have the impression that it is getting worse.”
Source: BFM TV
