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Throughout Raiyan growing up, everybody around him has grown accustomed to assuming what is on his mind. Well, we're not really given any other choice since he himself was not able to communicate his feelings to others. So everytime he shows happiness towards something, we would always link it to a recent happening or to something that he just saw or when he was screaming out in frustration, it always involved a guessing game where we would try out all the things that we "presume" will make him feel better and through the elimination process we would either succeed in giving him what he wants or reach breaking point or at the very least, distract him with something else he'd show interest in.

Since his improvement however, we'd started to realise that this may not necessarily be the case all the time. Especially with his eating (where the majority of past struggles were connected to), he would in advance tell us what food he wants to eat or if he wants to eat a later time. Previously when this was not possible, mealtimes were always a gamble because there are times he'd easily clean his plate but there are times when he wouldn't even look at his plate. Even after numerous times cajoling him to eat (that airplane landing in the mouth tactic NEVER worked for him btw), we always ended up sadly throwing his food away.

I have noticed that it's really easy for parents to assume what their children is feeling and this is obvious when it's the case of the child not being able to talk. But even when they do, it still feels like a reflex thing for us to just "know" what it is they want and why they are behaving a certain way. Maybe it's based on the knowledge that we are adults so it seems natural for us to know better than children. Maybe it's based on us (especially mothers) thinking that the child came from me so OF COURSE I always know what he or she is thinking. Perhaps it's because parents have a planned picture/image of what their child is going to be so any deviant behaviour can only be justified by the parent to be due to this or that reason, just to satisfy the expectation that the child is still on the same route towards becoming that planned picture/image in mind. Or more than anything, especially in this age or fast living, I just think parents never really bother to take the long time out and really question the child on things that may seem petty.

So especially with an autistic child, jumping into conclusions is really part of the ride for us parents. That's why when they start improving, we are forced to look at things differently because we actually WANT them to communicate their feelings no matter how petty the things it involve.

Like yesterday, nenek bini was telling me how the whole afternoon, Raiyan didn't go to her room even once. Our quick presumption to this was because the day before that, he was there, playing the computer for 2 hours straight and so we kinda told him off for doing that. Naturally, nenek bini and I thought that because of that scolding, he didn't dare visit nenek's room again the next day. Makes straighforward sense right?

Nevertheless, I still tried, just for fun, to ask him about it.

PM: Raiyan, did you go to nenek's room just now?

R: Noooo... (in a "no, i wouldn't dare" kinda tone)

PM (thinking our assumption may be right): Why not? Why did you not go to nenek's room?

R: Because.. she sleeping.

Whooppsss... he actually he had his OWN reason as to why he didn't go which had nothing to do with our assumption at all! Sorry Raiyan!! We'll try and not be so quick to judge the next time okay!!

PS: The title of this post is based on Jeff's fave line from the movie Ali Setan which was something his namesake character was saying to Azmil Mustapha when being accused of something..