SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY:

Four-year-old overcomes his fear of water with swim lessons provided by a scholarship

Devin and Ivette Sarkar The Sarkar family of Westlake had a rough 2009. In January, Neil Sarkar was forced to take a cut of 50 percent in his salary due to Northeast Ohio’s worsening economy.

Their four-year-old son, Devin was officially diagnosed with moderate autism.

But the Sarkar’s kept going.

“This is the only place that helped us,” Ivette Sarkar said, sitting in a basement meeting room of the West Shore Family YMCA.

Devin Sarkar – because of his autism – a developmental disorder that appears in the first three years of life, and affects the brain’s normal development of social and communication skills – was afraid of water, and afraid of swimming pools. His mother decided to enroll him in swimming lessons at the West Shore Family YMCA to surmount his fears.

“We were in a very delicate situation,” she said. “Devin had made incredible strides in his swimming lessons with the patience and love of his instructor Dawn Parris. If his lessons would have ended even temporarily, he would have regressed, and we would have had to start all over again.”

Devin and his swim teacher at the Y So Ivette Sarkar applied for a YMCA scholarship to cover the cost of her son’s swimming lessons. Millie Morris, who works in the ChildWatch program of the West Shore YMCA, went the extra mile to help.

“She basically said, ‘take it out of my paycheck.’” Sarkar said. “Millie has an understanding of children with special needs, and due to her support and insistence to management, we were able to receive scholarship funding.”

Neil Sarkar got a different job in August, and the Sarkar’s discontinued their YMCA scholarship at that time, because they no longer needed the financial assistance.

Devin is doing beautifully, and is an extraordinarily bright, active, well-behaved little boy. He now loves his time in the swimming pool with Parris, and his swimming lessons. One year later, he can float on his back, and is no longer afraid of the water.

Those sound like small steps, but for Devin, they are major leaps.

“When he first started, he was really scared,” said Parris, who added that Devin has “taught her not to be so structured” in her approach to swim lessons. “He taught me how to vary my routine.”

“Devin was terrified of water – that’s why I put him in swim lessons,” Ivette Sarkar said. “Little by little, we started building on things. I’m seeing a lot of hope for the future. He’s now coming home and telling me about his day.”

Even the simplest tasks are things that Devin struggled with. He suffers from speech delay and sensory sensitivity. “I had to teach him to point,” his mother said. “These are things that people not affected by
autism take for granted.”

Admittedly, it has not been easy. “I felt like I was pushing a car up a hill, and I only had my gas tank
full,” she said. But life is getting easier as Devin gets older. “You just have to take one thing at a time and focus on that,” she said.

Devin used to run around a playground of other children, because he was afraid of them. Now he will go up to other children, introduce himself and ask them if they’d like to play. “He is engaging other children,” Ivette
Sarkar said.

The West Shore Family YMCA has helped Devin succeed. That’s something his mother said she’ll never forget. “Devin is like a flower that didn’t open when all the other little flowers did. At first, it was hard for
me to accept, but now I realize he’s just as beautiful as all the rest of the flowers. He’s just blooming at his own pace.”

She brings Devin to the Y at least twice a week.

“I love this place,” she said. “We’re very pleased to be connected here.”