SINGAPORE: When asked if it was unusual that all three of her boys were diagnosed with autism as toddlers, Janette Costa had no answers.

“You tell me. I’m a full-time carer for my boys, a very busy mum, so I don’t know many other families,” she said.

What Ms Costa does know is that two of her boys have been on the Monash Health cannabis trial for two years and she can see the difference.

Salvador Perez-Costa, 15, and brother Sebastian, 19, joined the study investigating whether it would improve their core autism symptoms.

“It has helped,” Ms Costa said. “I noticed they were more aware of their surroundings and more engaged in their therapies,” she said.

“Before they weren’t very alert to what was going on around them. But now, for example, yesterday I had an appointment with a specialist and I got Salvador’s age wrong and he corrected me. Things like that never happened before.”

Ms Costa said her main goal was to help her sons become more aware and focused, “to have them more communicative, better socially and getting better sleep”.

Her message to other parents of children with ASD is that anything that could be helpful could be worth a try.