Gurgen Harutyunyan is 7 years old and lives in the city of Sevan. At the age of 2 he came to the Sevan Children’s Rehabilitation Center with his mother, where a rehabilitation doctor identified autistic symptoms. From that time until today, he has been attending the center and receiving therapy from a psychologist, speech therapist, special education teacher and occupational therapist.
During the first two years his behavior was uncontrollable. He had no understanding, did not follow instructions at all, did not respond to his name, and clearly expressed sensory difficulties.
His mother could not take him out of the center without specialists’ intervention, because the child would lie down and hit his head on the floor. At the age of 4 Gurgen was diagnosed with autism. As a result of the therapies he has become manageable and follows instructions most of the time.
The full burden of Gurgen’s care is on his mother. She is a pastry chef designer who prepares pastries, candies and sushi. So that she could have the opportunity to work and meet Gurgen’s needs, in 2025 we included Gurgen in the program “Establishing a Day care Center at the Sevan Children’s Rehabilitation Center”. Over the past years, thanks to the hard and consistent work of the program’s specialists significant progress has been observed. He understands the phrase “Don’t do that”, follows instructions clearly, and has become much calmer.
His interest in books, foreign languages and new knowledge is astonishing. We call him a phenomenal child because he has a large store of knowledge. He asks endless questions, pushing the specialists to give answers and explanations. In fact, we often joke “our staff learns more from Gurgen than he learns from us”.
This year Gurgen started attending school. There he spends all his time in the library because all the books in the world interest him and never gets tired of learning something new.
Thanks to the day care program his mother can now complete more orders and earn more money. She spends almost all of that income on Gurgen’s books and didactic materials, because he asks for something new every day and his mother cannot refuse him.
Until recently Gurgen’s mother wore only black clothes trying to “hide from society” as she put it. A few days ago she came to the center wearing a yellow jacket and continually thanking our staff, saying that the jacket had been hanging in their closet for more than a year-but she only wanted to wear it now because through our work and Gurgens’s improvement has become more optimistic and calm and she has great hope that everything will be better.And how can one not call this a victory…
