Week 5 Progress

Syukur Alhamdulillah for another fruitful week!

1. Raiyan is beginning to learn to reciprocate information without prompting. I would say "Raiyan, I have a phone" and he would then respond with whatever he has in his hands "I have a book". I'll go on to say "My phone is rectangle and black" and Raiyan would respond "My book is rectangle and blue!" InsyaAllah, these will be the seeds of having a conversation with him!
2. Amazingly, he didn't act obsessive with his cousin Zaty anymore! The last visit to nenek girl's house saw him saying 'hello' to each and everyone of his cousins AND there was no special preference for Zaty either! The whole night he completely left Zaty alone as he was preoccupied doing his own thing and for the first time in a long time, there was no drama when it was time to go home. In fact, we didn't even realise he was waiting patiently in the car with the maid whilst pweshes babah was still enjoying his ice cream inside the house!
3. When I said he was "doing his own thing" at nenek girl's house, he was pretend playing with a paint brush that he found and he started to act like he was painting all the walls. I asked him "What do you have Raiyan?" He answered "I have a paint brush" Then I asked "What are you doing with the paint brush?" He answered "I paint the wall"!
4. His library book I am happy to report was an actual story book called "The chimpanzees of happytown." Yes, I accept that the animal link is still there but again, the focus of the book was not on the animals but on the actual story line which involved emotions and adjectives that he can familiarise himself more with;
5. Whenever you say hi or bye to him, he will stop and think first before saying your name. Before this, he would almost ALWAYS repeat "hi Raiyan" first before getting it right.
6. He LOVES playing dress up and so far he has pretended to be a farmer, a zookeeper and a pirate. I have to admit that the "costumes" he uses doesn't look anything like the characters he's portraying! But whatever fits his imagination that I'm so happy he's using more of now is GREAT!
7. He knows his classmates's names now! J (his therapist) was kind enough to produce individual pictures of them and now Raiyan is able to name them all. Yesterday, he was even able to point out "Isobel" to us who we bumped into at Kiulap! Before, when he was at his old school, we would bump into some children wearing the school t-shirt and they obviously know Raiyan and was saying hi etc. But naturally when I asked him who they were, I just got a blank look.. so yesterday was a MAJOR achievement!
8. He has generalised (knows very well) the concept of "possession." When K first met him, she would ask him "where's raiyan's nose?" or where's k's hands?" and he didn't have a clue what she was talking about. But the other day, I was asking him whose phone was this phone which I have lent to my sister and he answered "It's usu's phone!" But then I said "NO, it's mama's phone but I let usu borrow it." He still insisted "No, it's usu's phone!" And I kept going "No, it's mama's phone" and he kept going "No, it's usu's phone!" Yay! My first argument with him!

We are also working really hard on his "l" pronounciation which surprisingly appears in a LOT of words. Because he pronounces it with a "W" I think that's why other people can't quite understand what he says compared to Jeff and me. An articulation specialist is coming over from ISADD at the end of the month so we are hoping she can help us more with that too.

Ok then till next week!