In 2013, Kevin Maher landed in Macao from Japan along with his four-year old son Tyler. As a recently minted American father, Maher recognised the obstacles awaiting his autistic child. But upon reflecting over the past twelve years, Maher recalls a greater candidness about the needs of neurodivergent children in Macao, whereas in Japan, where Tyler was born, the topic was rarely discussed openly.
Maher expresses his gratitude to several social services made available to him. The Education and Youth Affairs Bureau (known by its Portuguese initials DSEJ) helped Tyler find a local school while also enrolling him in a weekly special needs class. Though commending the DSEJ’s efforts to provide his son with the extra attention he needed, Maher felt that the agency was generally understaffed for the work they were undertaking.
[See more: What I learned from raising a son with severe autism]
“I wish that they could receive more public money so they can recruit additional teachers, they’re doing an incredible job on the resources they have,” Maher shared with Macao News.
Kevin Maher’s YouTube channel Sidetracked
Raising an autistic child is, without question, a Herculean task. With assistance from his wife and her extended family, Maher’s son was always in caring hands, but still required constant supervision. As Tyler entered adolescence, it became increasingly difficult to keep him inside: he often paced restlessly and exhibited other behaviours that indicated a need to release pent-up energy.
“In order to give everyone at home a break, I began taking Tyler out on various strolls to burn off the energy that would otherwise be bottled up inside the house,” Maher says. From nature hikes in Coloane to afternoon meanders through the Macao peninsula streets, each outing lasted around eight to nine hours. Those excursions were never dull for Maher, who enjoyed the trips through Macao’s less travelled parts.
After a few outings, Maher took his GoPro camera to accompany him and his son, later uploading what he filmed to Youtube, creating the popular walking vlog channel Sidetracked which now includes 5,000 clips with over 26,000 subscribers, with much of the content filmed locally.
In several uploads, Tyler can be seen or heard but is never the subject of those recordings. While those treks were successful in tiring him out, Maher described his own physical exhaustion when simultaneously holding a camera in one hand and with the other clutching his young son who was prone to sudden sprints.
[See more: Studio City is Macao’s first Certified Autism Centre]
“I’m faster than him, for now, yet I know all it takes is one hidden corner or a sharp-turning vehicle,” Maher says, describing the persistent paranoia that he might lose or see his child get injured. In one instance at the University of Macau (UM), Tyler managed to wander away, only to be found on the opposite side of the school’s 109 hectares (1.09 km2) campus, an episode that still haunts Maher.
The UM senior language instructor channelled those experiences into his creative writing. When he wrote Moon Over Macau, the book was initially intended to be a historical novel set in Macao, but his son’s influences added a personal layer to the story of a multigenerational family that faces several hardships, including one in which the main character’s autistic grandson suddenly goes missing. While Maher revisited that traumatic experience, the process also gave him space to reflect on the importance of family and the value of a holistic approach to work-life balance.
Building community awareness of autism in Macao
Now sixteen, Tyler has found a permanent school, attending a special needs programme at Caritas Macau. Besides taking classes to bridge the learning gap, the organisation offers apprentice and job training seminars to enable Tyler to become more independent as a young adult. Given his son’s immersion in Caritas, Maher continues his walking vlogs, though mostly by himself now, with Tyler occasionally joining.
“It’s ok if we don’t have the same hobbies,” he confines, “I want him to have his own interests.”
As Maher looks ahead, he says challenges for special needs children remain but acknowledges that meaningful progress is taking place in Macao as more parents are seeking assistance and the community is willing to discuss autism more openly.
This past Friday, the France Macau Chamber of Commerce (FMCC) hosted its annual charity gala, using the event as a fundraiser and drawing attention to neurodivergent individuals and their families. As part of the outreach, the business group will sponsor a Hengqin-Macau Inclusive Fun Day in November, which is co-organized by the Zhuhai Autism Society and the Macao Special Olympics.
“It is important that as Macao and the Greater Bay Area become closer, it’s not only businesses that become connected but our communities as well,” Rutger Verschuren, chairman of the FMCC, said in the evening’s opening address. The association later announced it had raised 61,800 patacas (US$8,000) for the charity endeavours to promote inclusion.
[See more: FMCC to support neurodivergent communities with 17th annual charity gala]
For Maher, the events are commendable. He welcomes the growing coordination between the business community and grassroots entities to design inclusive workshops, particularly apprenticeship and employment sponsorships that help struggling autistic children by giving them a path to follow.
While such resources are more widely available now than when he first came to Macao, Maher believes that greater public investment and empathy remain essential. Shifts in societal attitude take time, underscoring the hurdles that neurodivergent individuals and their families still face.
For now, Maher is optimistic about where he and Tyler are. “Macao is the right place for my son, and I don’t see anywhere else better for us than here,” he says.
