Week 45 Progress

Raiyan’s progress has been coming along really well. What we have been working on the past 2 weeks:

1. Auditory Memory: Here we are training Raiyan to really listen to what we are saying that then later on ask questions to see if he can recall what he heard. A few months ago, we checked his auditory memory by making him remember a sequence of things so this is definitely a vast improvement from then because he actually understands a story we tell him and getting him to remember. An example of a short story would be “Meg goes to the grocery store. She buys apples and bananas and pays for them at the cashier.” Then we ask Raiyan “Who went to the grocery store” or “Where did Meg go?” and “what did Meg buy?” and “who does she pay to?”, all of which Raiyan can answer!

2. Opposites: This one we are merely revising because he has been sporadically doing opposites all of these months so it’s a matter of consolidating all the previous ones he has learnt and to make his knowledge of them solid, which they are! He even knows “distinct” and “blurred”!

3. Following directions conditionally: On top of making Raiyan listen carefully to instructions, we are also making it one step harder by making him do a follow up action if what we are saying is correct. For example, we tell him “Raiyan, if you are wearing a blue shirt, rub your nose”. Of course, if he is wearing blue, it would be correct for him to touch his nose. But he didn’t quite get this so easily because even when he was wearing red, he still touched his nose! Well you can’t really blame him because all this time all we’ve done is tell him to do something! Hehe.. but he’s gotten the hang of this already and in fact, he’s started to tell US conditional instructions too!!

4. Imitates peers: Jo would bring a fellow classmate to accompany Raiyan during some therapy sessions and make him do or say certain things that Raiyan has to follow. So far, Raiyan can easily follow gross motor movements and actions but is still working on following verbal responses.

5. Comprehension: This is a follow on from item 1 above, because we would make Raiyan hear a story with a corresponding cartoon illustration and then follow instructions we tell him with regards to the picture. Eg. We use a picture of 3 factory workers in a car factory assembly line so after making him recall things from the short story we tell him, we go on to tell him to do things like “draw a line next to the chains holding the door” and “draw a circle around the man holding the paint can”. Notice they are very specific instructions that REALLY need tests his listening skills and auditory memory skills.

6. Visual Discrimination :We use this brilliant book called “1001 Wizard Things to Spot” which is kinda like Wally because they contain very detailed and crowded pictures and you have to spot and count a number of things within the pictures. It’s really good for proposition languages too because when Raiyan can’t immediately spot something, I can say, it’s on top of the shelf, under the bottle, next to the book”.

7. Listening to others’ conversations: Of course we are constantly working hard with the social aspects too so Jeff and I have been making Raiyan sit in and listen to our conversations and then we ask him “what are we talking about?” and ask more detailed questions about our conversations. Raiyan tends to then go off and talks about himself so we have to try to prevent that and make sure he listens to US and talks about US first before he starts talking about himself!

Behaviourally, he’s been really good for quite a while now where most of the time, he complies with what we say but not without some negotiations first. Lately, he has been stimming by putting his fingers in his mouth. I notice he does this as soon as he gets nervous or excited. We don’t really have a big problem with stims so long as they are controlled but with this one, we can’t help worrying about the fact that his hands are usually not clean when he’s sucking away on them. We told Jo and she said that next week, she’ll try and get a book on “germs” and hopefully we can teach him something from that book.

He has also improved with trying new foods and this morning, he finished a egg mayo and tomato ketchup sandwich with no drama at all!

Alhamdulillah for the progress! Till next time!