Week 4 Progress

It has been another great week for Raiyan. His speech is still coming along in a steady pace but it’s his change in behaviour that is really making me believe that his therapists are true miracle workers. Raiyan is generally now chattier and chooses to be more engaged with others if you were to compare to the times when he would just sit at the computer or in his corner all on his own, dissociating himself from the rest of the world.

I am also happily seeing a genuine personality coming out which before I thought was shielded by his lack of communication and thwarted by all the period of times he spent on his obsession on animals that took time away from him to discover other things. I know the neurodiversity group usually gets offended when one describes autism as being a trap or a wall around the child, but I still can’t help thinking that the therapy has sort of freed Raiyan as he really does seem to be in a happier disposition than I have ever seen him in.

Wow, this week saw a number of major achievements from Pweshes Mama’s point of view and I continue to thank the Almighty every single second of the day for it and not forgetting the utmost appreciation I have for his therapists- K and J, if you are reading this, you guys are BRILLIANT!!

1. Raiyan is beginning to negotiate things for himself now! This is huge because previously, if he wants something, it was either us giving in to him because we couldn’t handle the tantrums OR us not giving in to him, which means leaving him to his tantrums till it stops. But now, since he is able to communicate better, he manages to tell us what it is he wants without shouts and wails. For example when we asked him to have his dinner, he kept asking for his peanut butter toast which automatically leads us to conclude that he doesn’t want his dinner. Until he himself said “Ok, peanut butter toast first, then dinner, ok?” Jeff and I just laughed and accepted the deal and sure enough, he ate his toast first and then kept his promise and finished his dinner straight after! But we have to make sure that we don’t give in too much to his demands, however adorable his tactics of negotiations are!
2. His library book, for the first time ever since he started school, is finally not a book on animals. Every Friday since mid-September, all of his library borrowings has been comprised of books entitled “lizards”, “reptiles”, “mammals”, “birds” and many others . When Jeff and I first packed away all his animals stuff, we forgot about the glitch where he'd able to satisfy his cravings from his weekly library visit. We did inform his teachers about his rehabilitation but I guess it's too much to ask for them to have control over what he borrows. So imagine our pleasant surprise last Friday when he came back home with “We’re from Australia.” Admittedly, he must have borrowed it because of the kangaroo and koala link but at least he is exposed to other aspects of Australia from reading the rest of the book right? Now let's see what his library book next week will be...
   
3. Raiyan puts on his seat belt himself now and the best part about it is that it takes him a while to put it on, sometimes even more than a minute BUT there is not a peep throughout the whole time he’s trying to put it on. This is great because he has better control of his frustrations now. And I don't have to put it on for him anymore!
   
4. He slipped and fell down the other day and when I asked him how he felt, he answered “painful”. :D His therapy has been teaching him feelings along with the facial expressions he has to make to match his feelings so what was funny about when he fell was when I asked him how he felt, he went straight to the mirror and answered me WHILE looking at the “painful” look in his reflection! I am so thankful for this achievement because hopefully after this, if ever he is in pain, he would be able to tell me about it and where it hurts.
   
5. We know that Raiyan has a strong visual memory (I will post a video of him visually memorising his picture book nanti) but this week I discovered he has an amazing auditory memory too. He can list 10 animals (of course), 10 fruits and 10 countries that I told him, in the same order as I told him to. ( I will post the video of this also shortly).
   
6. He is beginning to generalise labelling all the rooms in the house, including the items that can be found in them. Again, this is very helpful not only when I want to ulun him to get me something but it’s invaluable when HE wants something as we can direct him to get it himself.
   
7. We’ve set up a table top corner in our gym/chillout room where we place his yellow therapy bag and sometimes Raiyan goes in there himself and asks US if we want to join him! At times this happens when the pweshes babah and mama are all comfy in the TV room but are left with no choice but to join him as god forbid you would reject an invitation by your child to study right?
8. He went on a swing for the first time in his life! You can read more about it here.

I do find that Raiyan can lose some words that have not been reinforced in a while as how I noticed his verbs were getting weak this week. To help, I have started taking pictures of everyone in the house doing things and hope to compile them into an album and study the verbs with Raiyan. I hope this is more helpful than the flash cards he has been using before because at least in these pictures, they are people that he is familiar with.

The tantrums are still there unfortunately but I’m not sure if they are less or we are coping with them better... hmm, I think it’s the latter..

Syukur Alhamdulillah for another fruitful week!