Week 21 Progress

Alhamdulillah, Raiyan can't seem to shut up these days. I never dreamt and envisioned how this can happen so soon but our family is eternally grateful that he's actually reached this point now. Sure, sometimes he talks and talks with no inkling of whether or not his audience is attuned to what he's saying, but for us, just hearing actual, comprehensible words coming out of mouth and for him to initiate conversations with others is just heavenly. (Attunement can come later...:D)

Raiyan had his half term break away from school the whole of last week, which meant that he needed extra attention from us at home, in what I can only perceive to be him trying to compensate what he's obviously missing from school. Hence, the endless questions and requests ensues throughout.. If it's not him wanting to draw together, it's him wanting to make rainbows with the play-doh, or him wanting to "sikut"(said with an English accent of course) and chase Alisha and many others, incessantly asked until we adults have to put down whatever we are doing and indulge him with his many wants. He really doesn't take no for an answer! (Note: Yes, we recognise the need to work more on this.. but it's sooo hard! With him talking, he's a hundred times more adorable and it's sooo easy to just give in!!)

Anyway, his progress lately:

1. Kerri says that he's just a whisker away from being able to answer "how" questions. Her only advice is for us parents to try and generalise it more. In particular, we have to make sure that he doesn't answer with "because", which is actually how he starts off answering any question these days! As I mentioned in the previous progress post, Raiyan can describe how to blow a balloon, and blow bubbles etc. I admit to be lacking in the creativity department lately in trying to think of other situations I can ask Raiyan to describe and so I've been relying too much on the flashcards. Since Raiyan already has gone through the flashcards millions of time (since he's getting 17 hours a week now), he very very reluctantly and very quickly answers my how questions and immediately after shouts "No, I DON'T!"
2. His receptive understanding of the Malay language is getting a lot better. The other day in the car, Alisha was crying out for her Barney DVD to be played so I said "Mana ada TV dalam kereta Lish" and then Raiyan continued for me "Only music Alisha". And yesterday, my mum told how she and Ida and Nor were talking amongst themselves saying "mana tia animals nya ani" and Raiyan all the way on the other side of the room yelled "the animals are here!" hahaha.. see not only can't we underestimate his receptive understanding these days, but the same thing also goes for his amazing hearing!
3. His therapy programme is still working on the tenses mainly. He can uniformly answer this sequence of questions now: (when asked to clap his hands) i. before clapping you ask "what are you going to do?" R: "I'm going to clap my hands". ii. when clapping you ask "what are you doing?" R:"I am clapping my hands" and iii. after he claps you ask "what did you do?"R: I clapped my hands."We have to continue generalising this in other situations (see more on the past tense below) and also we need to work more on the past tense of irregular verbs such as "blew", "ate", "hung" and "drank."
4. On past tenses, I am slowly seeing him being able to tell me about what he did earlier that day. One of my dreams is for Raiyan to tell me about what he did in school. And because we've started him on past tense, I think he's slowly getting it. Yesterday I asked him and he said "train book. go to north pole. party. polar bear." then he steered off in his normal ways as to where a polar bear lives etc etc.. sigh... (the first part was correct though because I DO know they are reading a book about a train in class);
5. On that note, another thing we are working with is trying to make him stick to ONE conversation. Raiyan loves to go off on a tangent when talking to others and a lot of times, answers our questions probably 3 of them at most and then starts talking away about something else (more than often, it would be about animals!). So everyone talking to Raiyan has to make sure that he's following the conversation through to the end. This will hopefully help him being able to have typical conversations with others.
6. Babah bought a "counting animals" book and Auntie Wen Wen bought him playdoh for his birthday (which was on Monday btw-my big baby is 5 years old!) and naturally he insisted to bring it everywhere yesterday (Tuesday). Kerri said to just let him because he's just likely to want to show others (just like typical kids) as opposed to the items being the flavour of the week. And true enough, this morning I told him he can't bring the stuff to school again and he said "okay".

Some speech improvement stories:

- Nenek girl wanted Alisha to salam her good bye and Alisha was being cranky and refused to do so. Then Raiyan nyampuk "Nenek, Alisha says no. She don't want to salam. Alisha's too BUSY (again, imagine real posh brit accent)" Thankfully my mother in law saw the humour in it and laughed. Raiyan apa lagi, iski lah and kept on saying it again and again, and again.. hehe

-Whenever I'm about to go to the gym, I ask him "why does mama go to the gym" he would say "to exercise!"

-My parents' old television is acting up these days so sometimes it just switches off by itself. Whenever that happens, instead of getting frustrated, Raiyan just says "Oh, TV is tired. give ten minutes to rest!"

As I mentioned, Raiyan has gone up to 17 hours a week (he started with 11) so insyaAllah, this will help drill in the learning materials quicker and easier.. Amin!

Till next week!