If you meet Raiyan

For anyone who meets Raiyan, and especially if you are just a reader and have never personally met him, let me try and help give some tips on how to communicate with him if you happen to meet the pweshes cutie:

DOS

1. You can try and say Hi Raiyan first but if he doesn't say hi back, go up to him, squat down, get down to his level and try and get his attention first and say it again. You don't have to be loud (he's not deaf) and you don't have to speak slowly (he would know what Hi Raiyan means hehe);
2. Introduce yourself by saying "My name is ____ "
3. You can ask simple social questions like "how old are you?", "where do you go to school?"
4. You can ask simple questions such as "what are you holding?" (and with Raiyan's track record, he's always seen holding something!). When you want to pursue more questions, keep it simple with only WHAT, WHO, WHERE and maybe WHY questions to do with that item. And do ask one question at a time. It takes him a while to process just one question let alone a series of them. Be prepared for him to not answer straight away. If after 8-10 seconds he still doesn't answer, you can try and ask the same question again.
5. If he answers in a fast mumble, you can try and say that you don't understand and ask if he can say it again slowly. More often than not, he would repeat what he said but in a cheeky "know it all" tone and saying each word a tad too slowly and clearly!
6. If you definitely want him to talk to you, be prepared to get into a conversation about animals-so you can ask him about his visits to the zoo, what animals live in the sea, what animals live in Africa etc
7. Do prepare for Raiyan to go off on a completely different tangent whilst talking about something-this may be because he has seen something else that caught his interest. You know it's really difficult to sustain his attention for too long right?
8. On that note, be prepared for Raiyan to just suddenly run off to the other end of the room as well. He usually does come back!
9. If Raiyan gets too loud, you can do the sshh gesture and tell him "not so loud Raiyan"
10. Be open minded and don't get caught up thinking too much of the "disability" or the "difference". Just remember that Raiyan is still a healthy, energetic and lovable young boy whose only shortcoming is not being able to communicate to others the "normal" way. That still doesn't mean that he doesn't understand what is happening around him and it certainly doesn't mean that he doesn't understand everything you are saying.

DON'TS

1. Please don't get offended when he doesn't look at you when you are speaking to him. Even though you may think he's not hearing or listening to you speaking when he's looking somewhere else, have the initial confidence that he is hearing/listening nevertheless and wait patiently for a response.
2. On that note, please do not talk about him to me or anyone else in front of him about things we shouldn't be discussing thinking he doesn't understand-more often than not and we may actually never know to what extent, he actually understands what we are saying and it's just naturally not a nice thing to do.
3. Don't get offended and judgmental when you find out he doesn't speak in Malay. We are working on him to talk in any language and for now it has to be just English since his therapists teach him in that language;
4. When talking to him, don't ask too many questions at one time. He will get too confused as to which question he is supposed to answer. Remember how much effort it takes for an autistic child to speak by computing all the words involved in this brain. So just imagine him trying to process just one question and then having to compose his response lagi!
5. Don't talk to him in too long sentences and keep it in the positive. Try to avoid sentences like "do you not want to eat Raiyan" OR "don't you think this should go there Raiyan?". Instead, it should be "do you want to eat?" OR "where do you think this should go?"
6. Don't be nervous and think that you won't be able to handle him at all. You can always try first with how you would talk to a typical child and you may be pleasantly surprised with how Raiyan may respond!
7. You know how sometimes we want a kid to do something cute over and over again-don't expect for that to come easy with Raiyan. Depending on his mood, we can never get a guaranteed response from Raiyan everytime-however cute he is when he says "CORR BLIMEY!"

And just laugh and have fun! Raiyan is such a happy, cheeky boy who loves people (contrary to myths about autistic children-he just finds it more difficult to connect to other people but that doesn't mean he doesn't like them) and especially loves to be the centre of attention! He is such a pure and absolutely lovely boy and I challenge anyone who says otherwise!