Updates, after what felt like an eternity!

I've been whisked away to the other side of the world for work purposes, yet again, for the past five weeks and naturally have not been closely following Raiyan's ABA programme, which I feel so very guilty about. As guilty as I am about having neglected this blog for more than a month. So this post is indeed long overdue and yet again, here I am promising more frequent updates from now as hopefully I will be staying put for at least 2 months!

Of course, I'm not going to kid myself and write a long post about Raiyan's development for the last 5 weeks because apart from the mini notes courtesy of Jo, I really have no idea. I do know however from his ABA file the areas that Raiyan has been working on (some of them are actually those carried over from the last session I had sat on which I'm happy to see as at least I'm familiar with them). As I might have mentioned in a previous post, Raiyan's basic language is in place, so the focus now is to expand his descriptive language, his vocabulary and his imagination and in turn his understanding and general knowledge of things around him. His current programme consists of the following:

1. Comprehending and verbalising visual clues - We still have many copies of this activity to go through where we ask Raiyan various questions about a picture and make him explain his answer. Eg. if there is a picture of a girl picking flowers, we can ask Raiyan "Have the girls picked the flowers?" (which of course Raiyan would simply say "yes" to), then we ask "How do you know?" which hopefully Raiyan will answer "because the flowers are in her hands". It may be simple to you and me but this was very tricky for Raiyan in the beginning. Alhamdulillah, he has improved on this so much and he is applying this more in a natural scenario too;
2. Phonics - Using the Jolly Phonics book, Raiyan has managed to learn all the actions and exact sounds to make according to all the phonics. As we know, Raiyan was an early reader with him reading up to level 6 of the Peter and Jane books at 3 years old. But he did this through his extraordinary memory rather than knowing to the exact pronounication of the words or letters he sees. That is why when it came to writing independently, he would often ask us how to spell the words he hasn't managed to memorise yet and would not even attempt to spell it using the sounds the words make. So hopefully once he knows what letters and combination of letters make what sounds, he will be more confident to spell words independently;
3. Time - so far, he can tell time on the hour and on the half hour. Now we are working on 1/4 past the hour and 1/4 to the hour;
4. General knowledge - now he is learning what things are made of and this has extended to things around him and more than those that are listed in the activity sheets;
5. Story writing - we brainstorm short stories together and then eventually, Raiyan will write them down. After that, we can match the writings up with pictures and decorations and make it look like a proper book. Actually, Raiyan already did something like this over the Easter holidays but with a lot of support from Jo. I will try to post pictures of that book very soon!

Okay, that is all I can personally share for now. Tomorrow I'll get to see Kerri myself since Raiyan is having a social skills session at her place in the afternoon so hopefully I can get more detailed information straight from her on how Raiyan is doing! I will update again soon I promise!

Happy News!

After exactly 17 months of therapy under Kerri's supervision, I was just beyond ecstatic to be told and confirmed by Kerri that Raiyan's "basic language" is in place. This means that from a place where he was completely unable to converse and was only communicating his needs with hand leading, crying or at best, uttering 1-2 words at most, he now knows and understands the use of "basic language" that has been directly taught to him in the last 17 months, such as:

• labeling vocabulary of body parts, rooms of the house, things found in the rooms, things found in places etc etc (nouns)
• functions of people, places and things
• prepositions (on, under, behind, next to)
• what is bigger, smaller, more than, less than
• all sorts of verbs like standing, eating, clapping hands etc
• what, when, where, why, who questions
• how questions
• opposites
• attributes
• adjectives
• past, present and future tense
• pronouns-he, she, they
• you and I
• contractions (he's, she'll)

and many more!

Not only can Raiyan converse with anybody now (providing people speak slowly and wait patiently for his lagging response! This we are still working on constantly!), he can easily independently write sentence after sentence to make into a paragraph. Just this week alone, he spent much time drawing a dinasour board game, complete with instructions on how to play, an invitation card to his birthday party for his teacher and all his classmates (complete with when and where it's going to be and what's going to happen at the party) and a "comic" book story of his trip to the zoo with Adek and Fadhil (his BFFs!).

Jeff and I feel like we are constantly keeping up with him and his amazing progress lately that we realise now how much we have underestimated him all this time. Also, how much we have really forgotten what it was like with him before because it is just so easy to take for granted now how I am able to just talk to him about anything and not only would he be able to understand what I'm saying but he can actually contribute something back to the conversation.

With the language in place, Kerri tells me the next steps for us to drill in him is to use the language appropriately, especially in social settings. All of us can tell that Raiyan has been developing a conscience socially and it really seems like he wants to have friends to talk to and play with but realising that sometimes he does get ignored by them (especially during times when he goes on and on about dinasours and animals!). Nonetheless, on the whole I am very pleased with Raiyan's progress when it comes to mixing together with his classmates as I do see him interacting and having some level of a relationship with at least 3 other kids in his class, so that's very nice for me to see.

To help improve him more in this area, Kerri is planning to have more social skills groups during the summer break where Raiyan and the other children with autism can mix with typical children so as it can be "practice" time for them, and especially for Raiyan who will undoubtedly be facing more social challenges when he goes up to Year 2 next year. **Any parent who are reading this and would like to volunteer their typical child to be part of these social skills groups is MORE than welcome to contact me and we would really appreciate to have your child around. I should say however that it would be helpful if they can speak English as you know these kids are being mainly taught to speak in English.

Now with that happy reporting, I just have to find the pweshes time to upload the many pics I've taken of Raiyan's creativity and progress! Look out for the dinasour board game, the birthday invite and pics of Raiyan and his friends at school to be posted up very soon! Promise!

Overworked

This is poor Raiyan asleep halfway through us doing the listening activity together. In all fairness to him, he just had a 2 hour ABA session with Jo in the late morning and here I was still trying to make him do more stuff.. As you can see on the drawing, he still complied and did what I told him albeit yawning away.. and then before I know it, he rested his head for a split second and he was asleep!

It's times like these that my heart just painfully melts cause I love him so so much.... Thanks for being a dream son Raiyan and I'm sooo proud of you!

Raiyan the Author!

Raiyan has recently started to learn to make up his own stories. It began with him being able to tell a few things about a certain topic, which he can easily do now. So when it naturally evolved into making up his own story (which is not only good for his expressive language but also for his imagination and creativity), Jo the Great went one step further and made him write the story down too. Now before I have left you amazed with your mouth open, that's not exactly what happens. What happens is Raiyan would first tell the story to Jo and then Jo will write it down. She will then read it back to Raiyan (without showing him) and he has to write it all out. And as a reward, he can draw something in the end.

Oh and it's no surprise that all of his stories below involve animals!

"Once upon a time there was a chicken who laid an egg. The egg fell in the grass and broke and the chick was talking to the mummy. The baby chick said Im hungry mummy. Mummy gave her some bread and turkey."

"If I had a wish, I would make a wish to live in the jungle. I would sleep in the lions den. I would eat meat and bananas and corn. I could swing through the trees with the monkeys and swim and stomp with the elephants. The end."

"One day there were 2 cars . They were raceing. They passed the farm and the zoo. One car crossed the finish line and the other one didnt because it had a flat tyre."

Brilliant!!

Week 36 Progress

It's been a while since I posted about Raiyan's progress with the therapy. Alhamdulillah, Kerri, Jo and Tracy have all said that he is doing very well with the programme. In fact, what is more important for him to focus on more these days is (surprise surprise) his social skills and his behaviour in class so we are now even considering reducing the ABA hours and instead adding on more hours for him to be supported in class.

With Raiyan’s basic language in place, his ABA programme has been geared into more logical thinking exercises that are compelling him to think more for answers rather than just being rotely told what to say. And from what I observed with his session with Jo yesterday, he is coming up with the most adorable answers ever!

Unfortunately, I have to admit that I have been slightly out of date with his ABA programme lately but now that I will be staying put in Brunei for at least 7 weeks before my next trip, I’m really hoping to get back into gear and start generalising his programme more (plus we are also newly energised with Raiyan’s new therapy room in our new home).

Things that Raiyan was doing with Jo yesterday:

1) Odd one out: Raiyan lays out five different objects that belong to a same family (like animals, fruits, transportations) and he asks Jo a question which would single out one item out of the 5 and then 4 etc until all are eliminated. So for example, in a family of animals, he asked “which one has a snout?” or “which one has a mane on its neck?” and Jo would (easily :D) guess which one he is speaking of. And remember this is ALL voluntary language on Raiyan’s part and not rotely taught at all!

2) Pragmatics cards: More hypothetical situations are set up for Raiyan in these cards and Raiyan is expected to answer what he would do in such a situation. Though some answers (especially in situations where he may not be familiar with) are given through the cards but one such as “What makes you angry?”, he answered himself with “When Alisha scribble my drawings”.. so cute! (But poor Alisha.. Jo said she’s blamed for a lot of things that upsets Raiyan..!)

3) Describing things: Raiyan will be given an object that he needs to describe with 2 or more descriptions. This is really good in encouraging his natural language to come out and also will help familiarise him with everyday situations when he needs to describe things to others to get others to understand what he means.

4) I/you/my/you/his/her: I HAVE NO IDEA HOW JO AND TRACY MANAGED TO GET THIS THROUGH INTO RAIYAN but they did! Raiyan always gets his pronouns mixed up so a good way for him to familiarise this is by doing things such as making him touch Jo’s nose and ask him what is he doing (“I am touching your nose”) or making him ask us what we are doing when we are holding Alisha’s hand (“You are holding her hand”) etc etc. He will almost always get it right IF he concentrates but at least we know he is capable of doing so :D

Raiyan is also doing better in class. His reading is very good and he is up to 4B stage now which we are told by his teacher to be the highest stage for his year now :D. He is also acceptable to do more writing and is actually doing more on his own at home (his current favourite now is writing birthday cards for his best friend Adek).

Of course his behaviour, especially in terms of his “loudness” still needs to be worked on. At the moment, Raiyan actually has a slight sore throat and is losing his voice a bit so hopefully from here, we will try and train him to get used to talking in a lower voice.

Alhamdulillah again for all the progress. Til next time!

Practising Writing

Raiyan really does not like to write. Ironically he already knew how to write when he was 2 and a half years old at his old school. But I have a feeling that he kinda overdosed on it after having to do writing homeworks at every weekends (!!)

But when he went to ISB and into Reception (Kindy II), we were surprised to discover that the students were not taught writing skills at that stage yet but only just learning to hold the pencil properly. The trouble with Raiyan was he was already accustomed to holding the pencil and to be writing a certain way which unfortunately happened to be the less than correct way to do it.

So the overhaul had to be done by Kerri and Jo in trying to re-teach Raiyan to write that together with the earlier assumed overdose from his old school, has caused him to just dread doing it.

Now that he is in Year 1, as I have said before there is going to be much more writing than last year, (in fact a huge leap from before) so it is our job to constantly get him to practise and practise in writing. As Jo said, just seeing him holding a pencil is good enough!

So I managed to fit in some writing time with Raiyan just now during my lunch break, and Alhamdulillah, he was very receptive (well especially since we were talking about animals! But hey it’s a start)...

Instead of just copying, I made him TRY to write things that we were saying together. He would still often ask what letter comes next but instead of telling him straight I would first ask him what he thinks from the phonetic sound the word makes.

I of course praised him endlessly when he finished writing his whole sentence and he actually looked so proud of himself when he saw the final product and when I took a picture of it. I hope that will encourage more future writings! Amin!

P.S:-The title on top was written by me in order to entice him to come over to the table and start writing in the first place! Oh and of course we had to place the animal figurines at the side just for extra happiness points!:D