Raiyan and his "Speking Speking"

There is no hiding the fact that Raiyan’s therapy sessions are completely conducted in English. And as you can see from the progress stories that I tell, all of his speech improvements are manifested only in the English language. To be completely honest, he probably knows at most 4 malay words/terms that he often uses, which are “tukar baju”, “mandi”, “susu” and “jalan”. Clearly, these 4 words are the MOST frequently used throughout him growing up which probably explains how they have become the rare words that Raiyan got on his own even before he started therapy. So instilled are these words in him that he STILL uses them mixed with English words like “I want mandi”or “time to jalan” and of course he’ll say these malay words in an orang puteh accent..

But apart from these words, Raiyan’s vocabulary is completely in English. And hence if we want any level of communication with Raiyan, we have to do it in the way that he understands and for now, it is only through speaking in English (yes, yes, apart from bath time, changing clothes time, milk time and time to go out!).

So please don’t be offended if you happen to ask Raiyan “apa namamu lai?” or “berapa umurmu?”, (which are clearly such basic questions you would think any child above the age of 2 will be able to answer), and he will either look at you blankly or just plainly ignore you. Instead, I suggest you try “what’s your name?” and “how old are you?”- THEN he’ll be able to tell you uniformly “Raiyan” and “4”.

And please don’t pass judgment when you see me in Supa Save for instance, clearly dressed as a Malay woman which I am, but only talking to Raiyan in English AND in a heightened voice (to help get his attention). I’m sure I seem “lacis-lacis” to some people who don’t know any better and I wouldn’t be surprised if they think I’m belabih or mengada-mengada when they hear me (or incidentally any of his caregivers) say things like “Raiyan, do you want the chocolate milk or the banana milk?”; “How many bottles do you want?”; “We have to wait for our turn Raiyan”; “First we pay then you can drink your milk okay”; and the most famous phrase ABA promotes, “Good Job Raiyan!”

This brings us to a really funny incident last week when we brought Raiyan to see the paeditrician. While waiting outside, Raiyan was playing at the play area where there was also another [malay] girl playing, who was probably a year older than Raiyan at most. Raiyan actually has always been a friendly person. The problem is that he is not able to sustain the interest of other children for long since he’s not able to converse with them properly. With the successes of the therapy, he has started to be able to do so with his ISB classmates since they generally speak in English at school.

So there was Raiyan trying to strike up an interplay with the girl at the play area by telling her to go down the slide whilst he was waiting for his turn “Come on, go, you can do it, go down the slide…” and whilst requesting her to join him at the see saw “Come on, first you go down the slide, then you sit here in front of me, okay?”. Naturally, I was so elated to be seeing and hearing what was happening before me despite the girl not going over to do what Raiyan told her to do which I just concluded as typical shyness or stubbornness normally acted out by children that age.

Until the point when the girl’s mother came and sat next to me to inform me that her daughter actually doesn’t understand what Raiyan was saying. She then asked if Raiyan only speaks English to which I sheepishly confirmed. Then she asked if his father was a foreigner (since I was already speaking to her in Brunei Malay) to which I didn’t have a choice but say no since Jeff was right next to me complete in his army attire! Looking confused she just said “so kamu dua melayu tapi kamu cakap sama anak kamu dalam inggeris saja?”

Errrmmm.. yeeaahh… MALU!