Have you ever wondered what it is like to care for a baby who never grows? Well, that’s the story of Mary Amoah, a trained teacher who has a 20-year-old daughter living with autism.

Narrating her experience on Joy FM’s Personality Profile hosted by Lexis Bill on Thursday, Mrs Amoah said life is difficult because she’s raising a 20-year-old under the autism spectrum.

“She looks like an adult but she’s a baby in every sense of the word. Sometimes, I weep in my room because Yaa, the baby girl I prayed and fasted for, is not able to do anything for herself even at age 20.

"At her age, we could have been having a conversation but I still have to bathe her and do everything for her because she doesn’t even understand her body,” she shared sadly.

Mrs Amoah’s ordeal birthed Klicks Africa Foundation, a support centre for children living with autism.

She is also the President of Inclusion Ghana, a network organisation working to reduce stigmatisation and ensure inclusive education for persons with intellectual disabilities and other children with severe disabilities.

Recounting the genesis of her daughter’s condition, Mary Amoah revealed that "just before Yaa, the last of three children turned almost three years, they noticed that she will normally flab her arms gleefully, she will run in circles but never gets dizzy.

"She wanted to play by herself most of the time. And sometimes, she’ll go and hide behind the furniture, and refrigerator and then at night, she will just cry. At other times, she will make a fist and stare at it. Unfortunately, we ignored the signs because we didn’t have knowledge about autism then," she said sadly.

It took a friend to open our eyes to understand what Yaa was going through. She was almost seven when she was finally diagnosed with the condition and I must say, “I felt like my world had come to an end," Mrs. Amoah narrated.

She, therefore, advised parents not to live in denial for long when their children are diagnosed with the condition because waiting and sitting on the fence, like in their case, could jeopardise any child’s opportunity to get early intervention.

Mrs Amoah also spoke about how her daughter’s condition affected her work and her health.

“I had to stop work at a point when things became difficult. So we had to depend on my husband’s salary and I started selling shito, second-hand clothing and groundnut paste”, she revealed.

Due to how expensive the treatment of the disease is, Mrs Amoah is advocating for parents raising children with special needs to come together to lobby for government’s support to enable them to cater for their children.

She thanked Joy FM for celebrating her and other mothers raising children with special needs on Mother’s Day.