Regino's message, a teenager with autism who dreams of "being able to speak", to the readers of EL MUNDO: "I need you to know me and love me as I am"

Regino is 13 years old and has a profoundly intelligent look.

He loves sports, music and dreams of being able to open a YouTube channel that brings him closer to other teenagers.

, to show others that inner world of such sensitivity that only he knows.

Regino has autism.

He still doesn't speak, but for more than a year he has been able to express himself in writing and tell what he feels.

To you who read these lines, who wanted to know his story, he also wants to tell you something.

He left here the first message from him:

Yaiza can you please tell your readers that I want to have friends.

Regino's birth "was a blessing," explains from Badajoz by video call, Yolanda Aguas, his mother.

His development in the first year was normal and she only had the feeling that the little one

.

"At 13 months we enrolled him in a nursery and when he had been a few weeks they called us to tell us that he seemed to have little muscle tone."

The pediatrician reassured them that some children might be delayed in their maturation and to wait.

It was at the 18-month check-up that he realized something was wrong.

They began to ask him in the consultation a series of "very basic" questions about his son's evolution, such as "when you point to something, does he look?"

which he could not answer.

something he found out later.

They were referred to a specialist and started with early care (interventions aimed at children with special needs) without having a clear diagnosis.

They received three different ones in just four months until a psychiatrist told them that she had "suspicion" that it could be ASD and that's when they went to an association to try to find the support and guidance they needed.

Regino with his mother, last weekend in the Proserpina reservoir (Badajoz).

"They say that there are

, what I think is that

," explains Yolanda.

His was a complicated case because "a very slow development was mixed with autism and sensory processing problems."

During the first years she saw that her son "was not advancing".

.

They all had to guess.

"It was very hard, years full of attempts, waiting, failures, anger, impotence and sadness. We walked through the desert," recalls Yolanda, who has been explaining Regino's evolution on her social networks and has promoted the CCapaces association with the desire to improve the lives of people with functional diversity.

"The boy was clumsy, he fell,

When they were six years old, they were given a medical report that "blocked" them and, given the lack of results, they refused to continue "doing things the same way" and began to look for other ways to help their son move forward.

Her destination was

, which she discovered while attending a nutrition course as part of a research project on nutrition and autism in 2015.

Doctor of Pharmacy and "expert in your child", Yolanda explains what this therapy consists of: "When we are little we

and these come from the five senses and from two more senses, the proprioceptive one, which gives you awareness of your body and the space you occupy, of the force you exert; and the vestibular, that of balance and location. What an occupational therapist specialized in sensory integration does is identify where you have deficits and what type.

in which the person receiving it intervenes [in Regino's case, at first it was swimming pool, climbing, cycling, rollerblading...and others that they did at home], aimed at generating or reestablishing those connections.

It is a very personalized and very complex therapy". Regino has always been a child who has needed to "move and escape" and has gone through times of "great impulsiveness". It was almost impossible for him to sit down. And it is still difficult today. An expert and this area is capable of

which produces a feeling of well-being that reduces their restlessness and increases their attention and learning capacity.

Regino began receiving this therapy 3 days each week in "small doses" and they saw some improvement, but it was not enough.

Aware that her son needed this treatment "as much as breathing", Yolanda continued to investigate along these lines until she found the person who turned Regino's present and future upside down.

In 2016 she witnessed at the University of La Laguna the presentation of sensory integration research with children with autism who did not communicate verbally and the results were promising.

"I want this for my son," she told herself.

And she had it.

She convinced the person who had carried out the study with the children, Jorge García Caballero, to offer them personalized support and for 17 days he and his partner, Itxaso Sarriá Irusta, a specialist in special education,

and the activities that he needed.

At that time he walked uncoordinated, he tripped, he fell, he did not stop moving, he hardly used his hands, he did not communicate... "They gave my house a spectacular tour and we saw results immediately," he recalls.

At that time, at the age of eight, he said "dad" for the first time and started climbing in a gym, which seemed unthinkable before.

Regino, with Jorge García Caballero.

With her son's progress as an incontestable argument, Yolanda requested a meeting with the president of the Junta de Extremadura,

, to ask him to introduce this sensory integration therapy in the classrooms.

Until that moment Regino was in a special school without the possibility of relating as he likes and socializing, so his mother raised with the regional government the possibility of creating an

(a space within a school for infant and primary education for children from special schools) in Badajoz in which Regino had the support of a specialized occupational therapist.

Fernández Vara approved it as a research project and it was Jorge García Caballero himself who designed it.

"My son was out of the curriculum until then and it is spectacular how he has evolved," Yolanda explains.

Mari Carmen Cerrato Tamayo, his "lady" for two years, connected with him "to an unsuspected point."

The sensory integration expert, Rubén Barroso Canales, was able to prepare them to "attend and learn" what his teachers had planned.

Mari Carmen also gave Regino a tool to be able to communicate better.

What he longed for so much.

On the board he used in class he added two simple and clarifying words,

Since then, he can answer any closed question asked and better express what he needs.

Also at home.

"I have always perceived that she had an intelligent look and we were the ones who were not able to make it come out," explains her mother.

The new teaching method revealed to Regino the world of letters and numbers, in which he continued to focus even in confinement with his virtual classes, to which he managed to "adapt well".

capturing their meaning.

This was another huge change.

They could build sentences on paper, cut out the words, and have him order them.

And ask him questions to communicate with him and transmit knowledge.

In December 2019,

and, for the first time, he spent the first Christmas Eve with his family.

A year later, on December 5, 2020, he wrote the first sentence of his life with magnetic letters:

.

He expressed the deepest desire for him in a first step to become reality.

"Better or worse he is going to speak," says his mother.

He so far he repeats phonemes and vowels.

Trinidad Caparrós López, mother of two 32-year-old twins with autism, Adrián and Nacho, has already begun to work with him and his family on a specific method to develop language.

Capture of the video in which Regino writes his first sentence.

After that first written sentence came many others full of sensitivity and that

far from the belief that people with autism live oblivious to what others feel.

His parents gave him a keyboard adapted to the tablet through which he can express himself.

This message was written for you on February 5:

I want you to write to your readers that I need them to know me and love me as I am.

That they accept me as I am

I am a gifted adolescent with autism who wants to learn many things

His mother speaks with emotion of each line he types and reads it carefully.

Every word matters.

Regino acknowledges and shows his feelings with great "purity".

Like that time when he surprised her with the phrase

when she asked him to pay attention to her in a very delicate way (

).

November 10, 2021 is another of the dates that his mother will not be able to forget.

She felt him uneasy and she asked him.

Her answers shuddered.

He pointed to the 'yes' in the photo that his mother always carries with her on her cell phone to explain that

He went to school, but had to pick him up on time.

He was still restless.

"

she typed revealing a thought that plunged him into a state of nervousness and tension for five days.

They are moments of crisis in which "she doesn't want anything" and she seems to face an internal struggle to understand.

Calmer now, he voiced his concerns.

At school a boy called him "autistic".

"People don't know, they don't understand, I felt very angry."

-"Regino, what would you say to that person?"

-

"We have gone from thinking that he did not know anything to seeing that he is much smarter than his father and I together. He has an overwhelming emotional intelligence," says Yolanda.

And Regino writes frankly to whomever he wants to listen to.

To his teacher

("you can tell the students that I am a gifted adolescent with autism", to his former tutor "I miss you very much. I remember you a lot", to the

: "Guillermo, I want to ask you to get help so I can learn. Thanks for the support" and future virtual followers: "I want to be on YouTube so I can have friends. I'm going to tell you that I'm very lonely."

We cannot settle, they deserve it, he is the one who drives us with that angel he has

Yolanda Aguas, mother of Regino

Regino has a great curiosity for words.

Every day he fills out a booklet in an academy to reinforce the learning of writing and in which he shares a class for the first time with neurotypical children.

.

At first he couldn't pick up a pencil and has already gone from the strokes to the letters.

He makes dictations and investigates with the help of his mother the meaning of the words.

He listens to his mother reading and gets up when she gets excited.

She also gets excited when she reads words that are born from her son.

Engraved on his heart he has that

that he gave him for the first time when he was 12 years old.

"The hardest thing of all is to surround yourself with people who know how to help you," Yolanda explains about the importance of trusting and exploring the potential of each child with ASD.

"There are more and more. You have to support them as much as possible so that they contribute as much as possible."

Autism is still an unknown disorder for much of society.

"You love what you know, if you don't know it you don't love it. I was totally oblivious and I understand that society is, among other reasons because we haven't heard from them. They behave differently and people don't know how to react, so They do not relate. A child with autism, an isolated child, "he says about the situation of many families and" it is very easy for you to fall apart because it is very hard.

Regino

and put aside the loneliness you feel.

Her mother tells of her advances in her networks to help her fight it.

Since then

have appeared in her life , children who have read her story and want to meet her.

He enthusiastically replies

Every night before going to sleep, Yolanda reminds her son of the enormous trust she has in him, the importance of her achievements and her dreams.

"You are going to be an

," she assures him, "because you have to help people who are like you to be known by people because you have the gift of speaking."

Regino's family never gave up, they don't give up now, and that has been crucial in his "spectacular" evolution, although he is aware that he also went through times of depression in which he lost his smile.

"A child with that ability that no one understands him," he laments himself.

.

He seizes the opportunities offered to him to do so.

How can others also learn to do it?

Through questions and trusting him.

He senses when someone is really interested.

Moment in which Regino 'says' that 'yes' he wants to participate in this report to express what he feels and needs.

In the absence of words, looks, gestures and body posture speak in special detail of what a person with autism feels or needs.

Yolanda perceives how Regino's face loses tension when he feels treated like a 13-year-old adolescent, if you explain to him in advance what he is going to do or why there has been a change in the activity that he expected.

Between parents and children a deep emotional connection is established based on a lot of empathy, intuition and deep knowledge of him as a human being.

"All parents have that bond that I have with Regino and that same hope.

her mother says without ever losing her smile or confidence.

That "clumsy" child, "full of bruises", now swims, dives, climbs, skates, rides a bike, studies 'educational robotics', adds, subtracts, writes and continues adding achievements every day.

And he always dreams of getting closer to others.

To you too.

Yaiza, you can tell them that I would like them to write to me

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