Week 3 Progress

Another week has passed and again, I’m delighted to report that Raiyan is progressing well and at a steady pace. I’ve also almost given up on sitting down with him at a table ala his therapy/tuition style sessions. This is because, no longer than 10 seconds after I bring to him his yellow bag containing the therapy books, flashcards etc that his therapists use throughout the week, he dashes out of the room which leads me to have to chase him and convince him to come back and so on and so on. What I try to do instead is just go through the therapists’ notes on what he has been learning and in particular what he has almost mastered, and reinforce those things in the daily aspects of life. For example, instead of showing a flash card of a scenario and asking him “What is he or she doing?”; I’ll just point to Alisha when she’s having her lunch and ask him “What is Alisha doing”? to which he will answer “She’s eating.” I also prefer this approach of mine because I’m not pressured to spend one or two hours straight, locked up in a room and try to finish a list of tasks within that time. My new approach allows me to “treat” him any time throughout the day and at the same time, familiarise him with real life scenarios instead of just what he learns from only books and flashcards.

Syukur Alhamdulillah, Raiyan’s achievements since the last progress post are:

1) His nouns, verbs and prepositions vocabulary is great! To the extent that I can easily ask him to get (verb) the remote control (noun) under (a preposition) the sofa (another noun). Yes, yes I’m also taking the opportunity to “ulun” my son when I’m too lazy to do that myself.. but I’m also teaching him OKAY!

2) His pretend play is improving. On Wednesday, he came back from school where he made a paper umbrella during arts and crafts and he was walking around the house with the umbrella above his head saying it’s raining. Then he even wrapped himself with a mini blanket saying that it was a “raincoat”! (This was all well except for the times when he kept crying in frustrations when the blanket wouldn’t stay on... sigh.. nantitah I’ll sew on buttons on the blanket..).

3) He’s better at understanding and expressing his feelings more. We were watching an episode of Mr Bean where he had to mind the baby and Raiyan looked incredibly worried when he realised that the baby’s mommy wasn't around. So he kept asking “Where is baby’s mommy?” with his face verging on streaming with tears and I’d say “I don’t know where baby’s mommy is Raiyan. How are you feeling?” and he answered “sad..”. Okay, the excited clapping by Jeff and me along with cries of joy was quite inappropriate given the circumstances but we just couldn’t help celebrating over the fact that Raiyan telling us he was sad!! WOOHOO!!

4) He’s beginning to learn to label things into categories, such as a piano is an instrument, a car is transportation, a square is a shape etc. This has been a favourite game we play in the car where I would call out things we see around us and ask him what category that item belongs in. Sometimes I enjoy playing this game a bit too much when I’m driving that I’m afraid to admit I’ve had some close calls on the road because of it!

5) He’s generally smiley and friendly now when greeting people and would almost always say hello or hi back (though they still must be people he’s familiar with so apologies in advance to any of you readers who happen to bump into us one day and meet Raiyan for the first time and decide to say hi..). One time when I sent him to class, two of his class mates said “Hi Raiyan” and he said “Hi Rifat” and “Hi Dan”back. My heart was jumping for joy when I saw that but my joy was ebbed a tad when I heard the same boys being called “Leroy” and “Aiman” by the teacher. Errmm...no wonder they looked a bit puzzled when Raiyan said hi back heehee..

Of course, the tantrums are still there and some of them are still quite nerve wrecking but we are all coping with them the best way we can. Just to share, I tried giving him cod liver oil more than a week ago based on a tip from a fellow autism mother as she found it had calming effects on her angel. Alas it did not have the same effect on Raiyan. In the beginning it didn’t really click to us that it had anything to do with the cod liver oil but all of us at home (including the help) did notice that his tantrums were a whole pitch higher that week. Once we suspected what it was, we stopped giving it to him and sure enough, the intensity of his tantrum definitely reduced. This clearly proves that a tip is not one size for all but hey, that’s not going stop me from trying! At least now, I can strike cod liver oil out of the list of possible remedies right?

He’s still asking for his animals now and then and we do give in to him at times and especially at times when we think he deserves to have them. There are still the cries when we take them away but definitely not as prolonged and fanatical as it used to be a month ago.

On a side note, I am also very happy to report that someone close to me who has always suspected that her daughter has some autistic traits has decided to go ahead and get an assessment done. We had a really meaningful chat this afternoon, especially about the challenges parents have in this country in not being able to properly diagnose our children that we suspect has autism and are equally dismayed at the reluctance of the authorities in trying to seek or fund treatment for these children. Apparently one has even been quoted to say that there’s nothing that can be done or need to be done because these autistic children wouldn’t amount to anything anyway. I’m not one to quickly trust a story based on hearsay alone but speaking from my own experience I wouldn’t at all be surprised that that may have been said. And that’s really, really, really, really depressing to hear.

As you readers must gather by now from reading about Raiyan, autistic children are NOT non-treatable and insyaAllah they WILL BE SOMEBODY one day. What was quoted above is just the unfortunate stereotype perception people have on autistic children that I and along with other fellow autism parents out there are trying very hard to break because not only are autistic children NOT NOTHING, they are in fact much more special than you can ever imagine.