Week 31 Progress

Raiyan's therapy programme has been more challenging lately but that's not to say that they haven't been in the past and alhamdulillah, with every challenge that has been put before him, Raiyan has managed to handle and overcome each of them amazingly well. His natural language now is coming along great and he is able to freely communicate how he feels in words that he is familiar with instead of just responding to questions in a way that was rotely taught to him in the past.

Below are some progress stories and also some of what we are concentrating on his programme at the moment:

1) Cause & Effect: Raiyan would be told a situation and then he has to tell us what he thinks will happen next. The difference now from previous occasions is that he is answering the effect part all by himself. Examples would be like "If someone tells you a joke, then?" Raiyan responded "then you laugh!". Another example "If the flowers are droopy, then?" Raiyan responded "you need to water the flowers!"

2) He can arrange a sequence of 8 pictures now and these are pictures of more complex situations than before. Example, there was a sequence of pictures where a mother was sending her son to school but they left his school bag at home and then the mother had to go back and get it. And not only did Raiyan know how to arrange the sequence, he was able to describe them too!

3) He's describing more complex verbs such as "he's hanging a picture" but even for those he doesn't know, he would always say "I don't know" OR "what do you mean?" OR "what do you think it is?" (So cute!). Jo however would still insist that he gives it a try and he's beginning to be more confident in saying out loud what he thinks it is.

4)He's starting to grasp with how to play hide and seek as he is able to close his eyes and count to ten now. But, he still has to work on finding the person hiding as he still easily gives up- which leaves me and Alisha to hide endlessly in a corner of the room waiting to be found!

Outside the therapy session, I think everyone can see how much of Raiyan's natural language has improved. We are also more confident in telling him things thinking he understands them. In fact, we find that if he doesn't understand something, he will keep quiet but when he does, he will always say "okay!" (and this is even when he's not even looking at you).

He's also becoming more attached to both Alisha and Addin that sometimes he would look for them when they're out. The other day we dropped him off at grandma's house and was about to bring Alisha to the clinic and he was so worried that Alisha didn't get down from the car that he kept telling us "I miss Alisha!" :D

Alhamdulillah for everything! Til the next time!