Item of the week

Autistic children are also known to get extremely attached to things. Raiyan has never had any one single item that he loves but what he does is get attached to something for a week or so and then move on to something else the next week.

He will get so attached to the item that he’ll have it with him everywhere he goes whether it’s all around the house, visits to the grandparents’ houses, to school, to the shops and as you can see from the pictures below, even the zoo. The items can be anything, which in the past have ranged from a bag of certain colour pencils, bag of small figurines, bag of small books, book of the week (this is the most frequent), mini posters, DVD covers and many more.

Every time we leave the house we would have to make sure item of the week is already in the car to avoid him screaming out for it when we reverse out of the garage. Our Indonesian maid is compelled to memorise the names of these various things AND in the way he calls them too so that if we forget to bring it, she would know exactly what it is he wants and goes back into the house to get it for him.

When we are out and about only one parent can hold Raiyan’s hand because his other hand is busy holding the item of the week. When we are eating out, there has to be room on the table to place his item of the week. When he goes to school who do not encourage students to bring things from home, we have to get special permission from the teacher to make the exception for him because he just refuses to leave the item in the car. When we're at the playground or jungle gym, he has to manouver the slides, swings and obstacles with the item of the week firmly in one hand.

As you can imagine, it could be quite an inconvenience, especially this one week where he was loving these mega blocks that he had to bring along to the Singapore Zoo. Inda lagi alang-alang banyaknya tu! It’s not enough that we have to take care of our 3 children when we go out, we have to worry about the item of the week too!

at the zoo and in the car holding his fave items