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Samuel Le Bihan, father of an autistic child: "My daughter gives me lessons of courage every day"

2020-10-25T16:41:57.601Z


In "Don't worry, I'm here", Monday evening on France 2, the actor plays a lawyer who takes care of his son with autism. A subject


A father too busy with his career and absent, a different child.

Jonathan, a brilliant lawyer, has no idea of ​​the habits, rituals and crises that punctuate the daily life of his autistic son Gabriel.

When he has to take care of him after the death of the mother, who took care of the 12-year-old boy alone, the mission seems incompatible with his life.

This Monday evening on France 2 (9:15 pm), the TV movie “Don't worry, I’m here” tells with delicacy and without pathos the meeting of this resigned father with his child and autism.

An apprenticeship for adults and a subject that the actor Samuel Le Bihan (54 years old), father of an autistic girl aged 8 and a half and author of the novel "A happiness that I do not wish to anyone" where he addressed this trouble, knows well.

The actor brought the idea, then entrusted Pierre Isoard, director of the series "Alex Hugo", the scenario and its setting in images.

After your book published in 2018 where you told the story of a mother of an autistic child, what did you want to show through this TV movie?

SAMUEL LE BIHAN.

I wanted to share what it's like to live with autism on a daily basis.

In my book, I was talking about the struggle of a mother who turns into a warrior.

The TV movie deals with the way this man learns to open his heart and lets love enter his life, while he is handicapped on this subject.

It is the confrontation of two handicaps: communication for Gabriel, and love in this father who has difficulty in assuming his fatherhood and will become a man by learning to become a father.

There is a complementarity between the book and the TV movie, and just as much of me in both.

In life, have you received testimonials from mothers who found themselves alone because the father fled when the diagnosis of autism was made?

Yes.

There are plenty.

It is mostly mothers who end up with children.

There are also fathers who stand up, but many consider that this is not their role.

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Because it's scary?

Yes of course.

And we don't feel armed for that.

Me, when I came out of the judge's office and was told that I had custody of my daughter, I was not sure what that meant.

Transforming into a family home from day to day is special.

With a different child, it is even more so.

Thanks to my daughter, I became super strong in organization!

The dad in the TV movie learns to listen to his son.

It is the most important ?

There is no manual.

We adapt, we try to understand, to observe, we reinvent another way of living together every day.

When I had my daughter, I told myself that the handicap would not imprison us, that we were going to deal with it and transcend it.

Whatever happens, I decided to be happy.

Is that why you traveled with her, taking her on your shoots?

I had no choice.

Children with autism need a frame, and with me, the frame was constantly moving, but my daughter's landmark was me.

This was very beneficial, as she developed adaptive qualities, a sense of the other.

Since then, I have chosen to live in Nice to stabilize it, set up specific work in relation to its needs, appointments with the speech therapist, occupational therapist, child psychiatrist.

When I shoot, I manage remotely.

It's more complicated.

Everyone does what they can.

My luck is to earn a good living.

The shoe still in the reception and care of children with autism?

Yes.

There are regions where the reception is more professional, and others where it is not good to be autistic in France.

It goes slowly.

We cannot catch up 30 years of delay overnight.

If France limited it, it is thanks to the parents.

Doctors tried to lock children in mental hospitals, and parents struggled to gain acceptance for methods of accessing language, exchange, autonomy, and which worked in other countries.

In the long term, it costs less for the French State to have someone autonomous thanks to integration, educational and professional inclusion, the training of AVS (auxiliaries de vie scolaire) and by allowing atypical children to be in contact with typical children, knowing that each will be enriched by the other.

In the end, it makes a better society and it is beneficial for everyone.

It's time to modernize.

When families call the “Autism Info Service” platform, which you co-founded in April 2019, what are the demands?

These are medical, scientific or family rights questions.

During confinement, the calls were multiplied.

There was a lot of loneliness and suffering.

We had to accompany.

We are in the process of creating a French directory to bring together everything that is done, all the associations, the specialists.

“Alex Hugo” continues to be a hit.

How do you explain it?

This character is human in his relationships with others, with nature, with justice… We all have wounds and we hide them in order to move forward.

Alex Hugo too: he built a second chance.

This character resonates with me and it's a gift.

The series made it possible to stabilize my life, to also move forward on other projects such as "Don't worry, I'm here", the writing of a film adapted from my book.

What has always guided me is a need for freedom and action to make things exist.

EDITOR'S RATING: 4/5

"Don't worry, I'm here"

, TV movie by Pierre Isoard with Samuel Le Bihan, Roman Villedieu, Lizzie Brocheré…

Source: leparis

All life articles on 2020-10-25

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