Literal Mind

Raiyan wanted me to put on his new Transformers DVD (which has now taken over Dinasours as his new interest) into my laptop. I was ONLY trying to impress him with my new Macbook Pro which has a CD slot where you just put the DVD in and it automatically sucks it up (instead of the conventional way of you pushing the DVD in). But still I forget sometimes of Raiyan's literal way of thinking cause as soon as I said "watch my computer eat up the DVD Raiyan", he let out this loud wail and started crying! So I asked him why and he said "Now my DVD has broken up in little pieces because the computer eat it up!"

WHHOOOPPPSSS!

Good Idea Raiyan!

Raiyan has begun to notice the roadkills we often see on the road and is getting especially worried about having to see quite a few in just one week. So yesterday, he turned around and asked me,"Is there no traffic lights for animals? Like for people to cross the streets?" Of course I said, unfortunately there isn't any for animals and traffic lights are around only for cars and for people. Then he asks "but why not? otherwise the cars will knock them when they cross the street!" I didn't know what else to say but "I guess no one has thought about building traffic lights for animals!' to which Raiyan then said "well, when I'm bigger and have more money, I will build traffic lights for animals too!"

Fake Raiyan?

Over the holidays, we have been trying to widen Raiyan's interests beyond just his obsessions with dinasours and animals, as we kept telling him that not everyone are into those things as much as he does and if he wants to keep a conversation with other children, he needs to be able to talk about other things too. We have tried to make him watch "Ben 10" (which I believe would be the "in" thing with boys nowadays?) and I have to commend him for trying but somehow after a couple of tries, he still couldn't get into it.

But the one "cool" thing that my sister did manage to sustain his interest in was "Transformers" and she actually made him sit down with him through the whole DVD playing of the movie. Admittedly, he was a slightly hesitant in the beginning but after a while, and especially since there was some form of correlation with dinasours with them transforming into something that looks like them, he really did seem to enjoy the whole movie and he even acquainted himself with some of the characters' names. However, between that time and this week when he started school, it still wasn't something that we saw he reeeaalllyy liked as once he got home, he still got back to his dinos and animals stuffs.

But Jo told us that on the first day of school this week, Raiyan was striking a conversation with the boy sitting next to him and I guess he figured that dinosaurs was not a common interest so instead, he actually started using the talking points on transformers that my sister shared with him while they were watching the movie! And then, there they were, actually having a "real" conversation about transformers! :-)

It was so funny cause Jo was just listening in the corner thinking "oh my, these are all lies! lies! hahaha!" Well of course they are not "completely" lies but we do know that he doesn't love transformers as much as he sounded! We can't help but be so proud of him as he really did work hard during all the social skills sessions Kerri organised over the holidays. And we're so grateful that he is able to recognise it when another child is bored or disinterested in what he is saying and not only is he okay with that but he actually is beginning to handle the situation better by adjusting his actions - something we hardly imagined he can do! It seems so contradictory in nature for Raiyan to have autism and at the same time have this innate need to please people (which is not at all surprising with both his parents having that same nature!) but I think it could act as a double edge sword. On one hand, it is helping his social skills at a faster rate than we expected and we are truly surprised that he has reached a point of knowing to be "fake" to please the person he is talking to, which is undeniably a basic and common difficulty for individuals with autism. But at the same time, I do get worried since I know how difficult it is for him to do this, that he might get too guilty for not being able to please everyone. I already see this happening when he gets really upset if I tell him off for something or when a friend ignores him. I think I really need to be conscious to not make him feel like he needs to please people all the time - which I'm sure is an alien thing with him since ALL he has been doing for the past 20 months is pleasing us with all his achievements! I guess this is another chapter in our journey of balancing autism and the world that we have to be aware of.

In the meantime, can anyone suggest what other "cool" topics Raiyan can talk to his friends and be "fake" about? heehee...

Bye Bye Tantrums

efore he was able to communicate his needs appropriately, Raiyan was infamous for his extremely loud cries. One of my girlfriends also commented how his loud voice was so unique and how it seemed to have different layers and facets too it (like a soprano layer, a bass layer, a tenor layer and a baritone layer if you care to imagine!). It was so loud that we always gave in to his needs as we just couldn’t find a way to make him quite down otherwise. If we happen to be outside and in public the only solution was to just carry him and whisk him back to the car.

Apart from the pain of having to tolerate the volume of his screams, it was far more distressing to feel helpless and not know exactly why he was throwing his fits in the first place. Often, we had to play the guessing game, the elimination game and we had gotten really good with inferences and assumptions by the end of it.

The golden lesson we learnt when he was first diagnosed and when he started his therapy was that we weren’t supposed to pay attention to the tantrums and better still, we completely ignored it. You can imagine Raiyan’s screams practically filled the house non-stop for the first two weeks or so when we employed this new trick. Alhamdulillah after persevering through, his tantrums indeed lessened within time as Raiyan soon realized that he wasn’t getting any reaction out of them. I guess it must have been strange for others to see when we did this in public since it is a natural instinct for parents to talk and console their child to try and make them feel better. As careless and evil as we looked, our faith in the technique grew more and more within time as Raiyan was seen to gradually move away from the excruciatingly loud screams to now a barely heard inside sob accompanied by whines and moans specifically telling us what it is he wants.

He’s been tantrum free for quite a while now that I think we’ve started to take it for granted. So it was a proud moment for Jeff yesterday when he was negotiating with Raiyan about something with another autism parent watching. It was during the social skills group session and Raiyan was instead too busy playing with his dinasours. This was clearly contrary to the purpose of the session so Jeff instructed Raiyan to put the dinasours away – an added challenge was the fact that he was already halfway playing with them (children with autism finds it really hard to suddenly stop something they are in the midst of doing and to shift to another activitiy. That’s why countdowns and advance warnings are very helpful for them). The other parent observed the whole time Jeff was telling Raiyan to pack up his dinasours which Raiyan eventually reluctantly complied with but not without his typical “pathetic” (as Jo and I call it! Hehe!) whines and sobs. And she straight after told Jeff of how impressed she was with Raiyan not really put ting up a protest and how there wasn’t a single shout or scream heard. Even in school, Jo often tells me how a number of teachers found it so hard to believe that Raiyan is the same boy from last year that they remember to be the one rolling around on the library floor screaming just because he couldn’t get to read his animals book.

I am so grateful for all this positive feedback not only because it reminds me of how much he has achieved as I admit, it’s quite easy to take for granted and and to actually think that he has always been like this! It’s also a wonderful thing because we are proving to others that it is possible for tantrums to be substantially reduced or even stopped. I can’t be sure if it was down to the consistent technique that we practiced or if it’s just due to Raiyan being generally obedient in nature. Nonetheless, I am so grateful and proud when I watch old home videos and clearly see what a “far cry” those chaotic tantrum moments were where we had no choice but to just give in to his needs, however irrational and inconvenient they were.

Can't Argue With Raiyan

Raiyan was expected to bring an “artifact” to school the other day but it slipped poor babah’s mind as he had to be a single parent again this week with me being away in Singapore. On one of the nights that I was away, babah typically brought the kids out to Hua Ho to spend some quality time together and of course for him to sporadically indulge in solely spoiling them without me putting the strict brakes on.

With Raiyan being all into dinasours now, it was no surprise that he went home with a new bucket of dinasour figurines (to add to his gazillion collections already). The next day, he very casually asked babah if he can take his dinasours to school for “show and tell” . We as his parents are somewhat aware that his class has “show and tell” sessions but weren’t completely sure on what day it was. Impressed with Raiyan’s initiative, babah gave the green light and Raiyan happily lugged his bucket of dinasour figurines to school.

The afterschool report we had received from Jo was just short of hilarious! Apparently, Raiyan had already sensed some level of guilt for talking and breathing dinasours a bit too much before Jo (as I think because Jo would see it more with her spending more time with him in school). So Jo told us of his immediate “uh-oh” look when he saw Jo come into class without a chance of him hiding his dinasours.

Jo: What’s that?

Raiyan: It’s my artifact because we are supposed to bring artifacts to class!

Jo: But Raiyan, that is not at artifact! Artifacts are old things that have been around for a very long time.

Raiyan: But DUH Jo, dinasours are artifacts because they are a million years old!!

HOW CAN YOU ARGUE WITH THAT?! LOL!

Breaking an autism myth

When I first started learning about autism, one of the things I had read was that autistic persons are not able to profess their love to others in words. Surprisingly, I had accepted that “fact” because at that point I was just content to have Raiyan just talk anyway, so the need for him to tell me he loves me was hardly necessary! Also, I was already comforted with Raiyan’s constant hugs and needs to hold me when he’s about to sleep as signs that he indeed does love his mama.

So I never had any expectations for Raiyan to say on his own initiative the actual words “I love you mama”. All I expected was for him to just reciprocate when I was the one telling him that I love him. Even this was a challenge in itself as in the early days, he would almost always say back “I love you Raiyan” (because of the echolalia) and it took constant remindings for him to eventually respond correctively by saying “I love you mama.”

Now, as you can tell from my recent posts, Raiyan is at such a good place right now and he is constantly amazing all of us with what is going on in that special little head of his. It’s like as if all of the things that he has learnt in the last 17 months are slowly falling into the right places and he seems to have a much clearer understanding of using what has been taught, not only in how he himself uses it but also in how others are using it too.

And yet, I still never expected him to independently say “ I love you” simply because that was one of the “facts” that I have accepted from the start as being a trait of autism.

Until two weeks ago when he has started to say this to me, out of nowhere, just out of the blue, without me initiating it.. the special words “I love you mama” came out of his mouth completely independently. And I really feel and believe he’s saying it because he really means it. My instinct tells me that he probably said this because he’s missing me more lately because I’ve been spending more time at the gym after work but at the same time I also really think because of this “everything falling into place” phenomena that he is going through, Raiyan has finally understood what it means to say “I Love You.”

He’s only ever said it four times in the last 2 weeks which convinces me even more that it is a genuine statement rather than it being a favourite phrase of the week! And I notice that when he says it, along with holding on to a part of my body very tightly, it’s also in this really loving and heartwarming tone that I do not doubt the love that he feels for me. He even had Jo sent me a text message saying “I love you mama, B-) Raiyan” last week!

So for any parent who thinks it’s not possible for their child to say “I Love You” think again! That’s actually just another myth as opposed to a fact in this complex world of autism!

Visit to the Fish Market

Raiyan came along to the Jerudong wet market this morning (and Alisha too! hehe nothing like menyakaikan drg awal2!) and not only was Raiyan really good for getting over his fear of walking on wet surfaces, he thoroughly enjoyed himself going round the stalls and identifying the types of fishes he recognises from his animal books!

Of course I couldn't help being conscious of his labeling being only in English and the people manning the stores are telling him what they are called in Malay (Raiyan: "Tangeeree?") but at the same time maybe I was more conscious of myself as I was clueless of what half of the fishes are called anyway!

Apparently, these long fishes in the basket are "pikes"...

The most pweshes part was Raiyan singing out loudly to himself (while we were waiting for our fishes to be cleaned),

"1,2,3,4,5.. once I caught a fish alive..
6,7,8,9,10 then I let him go again..
why did you let him go.. because he bit my finger so..
which finger did it bite.. the little finger on the right!

We just couldn't help giggling listening to him and couldn't help but notice others were smiling too! So Cute!!:-D

Let It Flow

This was Raiyan last Sunday at Muara Beach Playground making friends with this boy who he just met and who I'm pretty sure did not speak English very well and yet, they played together and clearly enjoyed each other's company for at least half an hour- and also despite Raiyan's ultra bossiness too!

Picture: Raiyan: "You better hurry! Come here! I'm over here! Climb this, climb that!" Boy: "Okay!Okay!"

And of course Raiyan was just shouting away with his standard volume and there I was at a corner fighting the urge to tell him "Raiyan, lower your voice. Raiyan, don't be so bossy. Raiyan this Raiyan that.." but remembered what I had decided in my last post and just let him socialise naturally. The new friend didn't seem bothered with Raiyan's loudness and bossiness so why should I right?

Being Social

As some of my followers would know by now, one of my biggest worries is the idea of Raiyan not mixing in well in class or when being around other kids in general. This concern was especially heightened when he had such a rocky start to the school year with there being complaints of his loud voice and his resistance to turn taking and sharing.

So it is no surprise that ever since then, we have been going on overdrive trying to instill in him one social skill rule after another. Every time he does something that I would perceive as rude or socially unacceptable, I would drill it in him to not do that again and if he doesn’t do something that he should be doing, like not responding to others’ questions, I would incessantly remind him to look at the person and then answer the question.

All of us around him, including Kerri and Jo gets kinda edgy over this that you can practically see the nerves on our faces every time somebody new asks Raiyan a question as we are just waiting with utter anxiousness for his response! Which is why I still laugh at one moment during our Hari Raya open house when Jeff’s boss was asking Raiyan his name, and there was Kerri and Jo on the other side of the room stopping cold in the middle of eating, anticipating Raiyan’s response and as soon as he said “Raiyan” they BOTH just exclaimed “good boy!” LOL!

However, I was recently reading up on social skills in the “Work in Progress” book and learnt that the best way for these children to pick up natural social language and incidentally social “rules” is through mixing in with their peers and not so much learning it from adults. It’s because children do have this innate desire to please their friends much more than their parents or teachers. Furthermore, the “natural” social language amongst kids are clearly so different from the “natural” social language of adults.

And then it hit me that it may not be such a good idea for me to go TOO overdrive with teaching him social language and rote teaching social rules because at the end of the day, being social is a spontaneous and natural thing and as soon as it looks planned, it ends up looking contrived and NOBODY likes fake people right?

And in terms of his language, the systematic way that he is taught inevitably leads him to sound very “prim and proper” when he talks which is completely fine with me as I am just content to have him talk. But the thing is sometimes he does end up sounding like a middle aged English professor! So lately, instead of forever correcting his broken English and making him speak in longer sentences, I’ve also taken a step back in that because I realize that I personally do not know any 5 year old who speak in a grammatically accurate 6-7 word sentence anyway!

Raiyan is at a point now where his personality is shining through and though I do accept that his language is not completely there and he still tends to talk on and on about his interests without really attuning to his audience, I have to accept that he’s still a kid, he will eventually learn all these so called rules slowly but through experiencing them and not just by being told about them but most of all, I have to be confident that despite all the shortcomings that I only see because I’m so stressed out over them, other children are also children, who are not cynical and who will be able to just see Raiyan for the sweet and delightful boy that he is. InsyaAllah he will get through this and at least for now, I’ve taught myself to not be so worried about it anymore. :D

Golden Points

Jo first told me about the token system she's been doing with Raiyan and she also asked Dr. Lee during the seminar if it’s an acceptable thing to do. We were glad to hear that he did think that it is useful as a positive reinforcer for desirable behavior that we would seek from Raiyan.

Last Sunday at the bookstore, Raiyan really wanted to buy this amazing Little Einsteins Activity book, equipped with more than 1000 animal fact files and little “microfilm” pictures. Of course I was reluctant to do so since I’ve already bought him a bunch of stuff from my Singapore trip. Usually, Raiyan is actually fine with putting the book back on the shelf (this was once an actual “routine”!) but in this case he was resistant and he said “but somebody else might buy it!”. So just to be safe, we asked the cashier if there are many in stock and unfortunately the one on display is the only one left. Empathizing with Raiyan’s fear, we decided to just buy it for now but he can only have it once he has earned 50 Golden Points (similar to the token system Jo has been doing). Naturally, just hearing us planning to buy it was good enough for Raiyan so he seamlessly agreed to the plan.

So it’s been 3 days and 11 points into the plan and it’s quite good actually! Of course I didn’t hesitate to use it to entice him to finish his meals faster AND staying put at the dining table(which he did!) and I actually had it in my mind to do that at every mealtime. Raiyan thought so too until Babah stepped in and said that it’ll be too easy if we were to give it at every mealtime and there’s the risk of it becoming a routine too. Unfortunately Raiyan only found out about this change of plans AFTER he finished his dinner so when he ran to me and exclaimed “I finished my dinner! Can I get my 3 points now?” I had to break the sad fact to him and he let out a teeny sob “Aaawww..” together with a long face. I felt so sorry for him and nearly gave in but felt I didn’t want to overstep Babah so instead I asked him if he wants a banana instead and Raiyan immediately perked up and said YES and forgot all about the points he didn’t get! (We really forget how easy it is to make these kids happy sometimes!).

I keep track of his golden points by drawing stars on the whiteboard and keeping count of them with the BIG 50 at the bottom of the board. Raiyan gets so excited whenever we count how many stars he’s got, which at the moment stands at 11. But then he would ALWAYS say thereafter, “But mama, I think 50 is too much!” Heehee..

Also, apart from wanting desirable behavior, I’m also trying to use the points system to help avoid undesirable ones though I do try to keep it a minimum as I don’t like to “punish” him too much. The only thing I’m stressing on now is his articulation of “excuse me” which I know he can say but lately he has been lazy and saying “ku me” instead. I’ve been drilling this in him for the last 2 weeks now and he IS getting much better at it but just to instill it more, I warned him that if I catch him saying “ku me” I will take one point away. Oh you should have seen how sad he was when I did do that just the one time. I brought him to the whiteboard and canceled out one star and he just sat down in front of the board and cried out softly “nooo..”.. I felt so EVIL but the good thing is not only has he NOT said “ku me” ever since but he was even MORE motivated to get his points thereafter! Bless him!

Give us a clue

Part of Raiyan’s programme recently was for Raiyan to tell us why something is what he thinks it is. For example, when shown a picture of a “cowboy” and if Raiyan himself thinks it is a cowboy, he has to tell us why he thinks it is a cowboy, which would be reasons like the boy being on a horse, him wearing a cowboy hat and cowboy boots and with him carrying a lasso. Raiyan slowly learnt that these things are called “clues”.

He ended up getting really keen on doing this as he just loves to get us to guess what he is holding or what it is he likes etc and if we say we don’t know, he will say “Ok I give you a clue! It is round, blue and it bounces!” (A ball!) OR “It has a mouse and cat in it and it begins with the letter T!” (Tom and Jerry!).

This has also proven to be good for reducing our prompts with him because rather than just tell him the answer straight away, we would instead give him clues and wait until he figures it out eventually. Naturally, this is really conducive towards his language development as well.

But most of all, it has proved to be really helpful during those times when we are not completely sure if he knows something but instead what he does is to pretend to know it. What this incredibly cheeky boy like to do is to trick us to telling HIM the answer by asking us to guess when in fact we are just going to feed him the answer by doing that!

For example, when we were about to visit his dear friend Fadhil at the hospital and whilst deciding on what present to buy for him, babah asked Raiyan if he knows what Fadhil likes. At first we can tell that he was just playing “hentam” because he was saying “Dinasours, animals and Tom and Jerry” which we know are the things that HE likes.

But then he said “Oh I know what it is. Come on Babah you know what it is. Guess!”

We probably made like close to 10 guesses and Raiyan kept saying “No.. come on.. you know it..” And even when we kept saying we give up and begged him to tell us the answer, he still insisted that babah knew the answer and so he’s not giving it away!

Around the 11th guess, I started to get suspicious on whether or not he actually knows the answer and perhaps what he was really doing was to trick us into telling him what Fadhil’s favourite thing is because he himself actually has no idea!

But lo and behold, I remembered the “give us a clue” trick and asked him for one and he immediately said “it begins with the letter F and we watched on TV at Adik’s house”. Only then did babah completely remembered “Fireman Sam” which he vaguely remembered Raiyan telling him about them all watching it together during one of the times they were at Adik’s house!

We really can’t ever underestimate this boy or what! :D

Raiyan Social Update

Okay enough of all these deep shcmaltz I’ve been composing of late and high time we start talking about pweshes Raiyan again! Sorry to have not updated on his progress specifically in so long. I had actually planned to do a 2008 round up which basically summarizes all of his achievements month by month all the way from when he started ABA in January 2008. As you can imagine, this takes up a lot of work as I had to go through his thick programme file week per week. It is worth the effort nevertheless because it reminds me of how he was before (how easy one forgets!) and it is just amazing how far he has come. I am happy to report that I’m already up to October so expect to see that post up very soon!

Anyway, I did want to share something Jo told me yesterday that I’m beginning to be more convinced of as opposed to before- Raiyan actually having genuine “typical” friends that not only he seeks to play with but seeks to play with him too! All this time, I guess I really underestimated both Raiyan and “typical” 5 year old children because I just keep thinking of how others would not being able to accept the “difference” in him- I mean how could other people not find him ignoring them rude, or what about the fact that he strays off into his own topic conversation unilaterally without being attuned to his audience..

It’s not like I thought he will never have friends, I just didn’t think he was at THAT stage just yet because I know it’s still difficult for him to tune in to someone talking to him and to stick to one conversation at hand. At the same time, I wasn’t all that concerned and it wasn’t really something I deeply craved for as he was building friendships with his Learning Ladders buddies anyway, like Adek, Fadhil, Danial, Raiyyan Iman, Harris, Hakeemi, Sarah etc.. The fact that he always talk about them comforts me with the thought that no matter what, he DOES have friends in them.

So that’s why I was just OVER THE MOON yesterday when Jo insisted (cause I was still pretty hard to convince!) that Raiyan has this one boy pal in another class (who incidentally was from his reception class last year) named Jian Rong who he looks out for every break time AND Jian Rong looks out for him too :D:D:D:D She didn’t tell me exactly what they do but the idea that the 2 of them loyally looks out for one another at every break time is just too much of an *uhuks* moment for me to handle!

So later on at dinner I asked him about his friend and of course the first people he always names are all his Learning Ladders friends. But when I kept asking about somebody else, he hesitated and didn’t know who I was talking about. So I clued in the fact that he is in year 1B and his name beginning with the letter “J”. He still didn’t quite get it until I said “Jian” and he let out the BIGGEST smile and squealed “OOOOHHH JIAN ROONGG- He’s not in 1B, he’s in 1I! YESS He's my friend..”. BLESS!!

So YES, he CONFIRMED that Jian Rong was his friend and they play chase together at breaktime and other games too. From then, it was easier for me to ask him who else are his friends as he already understands what angle I’m coming from. Before, I would ask him who are his friends in class/school and he JUST DID NOT get the concept of what I was talking about. But NOW that we’re talking about Jian Rong, he knew exactly what I was asking and it wasn’t too hard to get out of him 2 other friends that he likes to play with- Anna and Adam!!! (Who incidentally Jo also told me likes to play with Raiyan too!) Alhamdulillah!! Isn’t it great! PLUS Anna is BEAUTIFUL! (Girlfriend potential maybe? Hahaha astaghfirullah….)

Chubby!

This is Raiyan doing "chubby" boy - it's something that I taught him which an old darling friend taught me back in college hehe.. Kakak Shayeen, if you're reading this, it's especially for you! Thanks for teaching me this cute thang.. everybody loves to watch Raiyan doing this!

What's YOUR autistic thing?

As I think I might have mentioned on here or on pweshes diaries, my one "thing" that you could call bordering on an autistic trait because it's something that uniquely bothers me and not so much others, is hating to see different play-doh colours being mixed up.

I think that's probably why growing up I didn't play with play doh much if compared to other children because this "thing" of mine must have restricted me from being able to play with the play-doh as extensively as other kids.

I think it has to do with the fact that once they're mixed, that's IT. You can't go back to the original colour and you're left with the mucky colour that is the unfortunate product of your mixing experiment. Just like Raiyan's green farmer he once made.

And also, knowing how much the kids love to play with play doh, we end up just buying new sets of play doh everytime we go to the shop. Which would affect another trait which I can say is probably a typical trait a lot of other parents share- spending more money!!

So thankfully I discovered from the grand internet a way to make your own play doh! Admittedly, they are not as perfect as the store bought one but the kids didn’t seem to notice any difference (even Raiyan!!- or I think his polite conscience has been shining through more lately!) and I could finally sit and happily watch them play the play doh and not worry about all the colours getting mixed up and ALSO about them drying up etc etc because once that happens, we can just make some more! Yay!

the mixed colours don't bother me anymore!

A few funny things about this story that I want to share:

• When I was telling Raiyan that we only had red, yellow, blue, green and pink colouring so those are the only play-doh colours we can make, Raiyan cheekily said “But mama, we can mix the colours to make other colours!” DUH mama;
• I actually bought the wrong kind of salt as the texture would have been better had the salt been finer. I however didn’t expect Raiyan to REPORT it to Jo the next day (who always makes fun of my very frequent “DUH” moments”): “But um sorry Jo, Mama bought the wrong salt!”

Anyway, you can see the process of us making the play doh here. It’s a really good get together activity too you know!

Bossy boy

Raiyan has always been so demanding and if he wants something, he’ll always insist to have it there and then and until he gets whatever it is he wants, he will continue to repeat his demands over and over and over again until it’s met.. regardless of how busy the people around him are.

Now that his language development is going really great, we are more comfortable and confident to tell him more things and believe he would understand them.

So recently we began to tell him that he is very bossy and that’s not necessarily a good thing. We explained to him what bossy meant and sometimes it does affect him and he actually stops his incessant requests because he knows being bossy is not very likeable.

But at the same time, he has also “embraced” this character of his and to make us laugh when we’re being annoyed with his bibiran demands, he’d say “I’m a bossy boy hehehe”

He seems to kind of accepted himself to be this bossy boy that last night, out of nowhere he started to sing to himself in the tune of “are you sleeping”:

Where is bossy? Where is bossy?
Here I am , Here I am,
I’m a bossy boy, I’m a bossy boy,
Bossy boy, bossy boy

Hahahahaahaa!!!!

Can you handle the truth?

Raiyan's into his "difficult to eat" phase again and a few days ago he still went on with the pahlaver that his stomach was full and that he had a stomach ache so that's why he couldn't eat his meals. It became so dramatic that he would gag and then run up to us to show the tears in his eyes and a "repeat" of his gag reflex and saying "SEE mama? the food makes me cough and sneeze*!" (*we haven't quite taught him to say "puke" or "vomit" yet so the closest thing he came up with was a cough and a sneeze! Hehe!)

Seeing how sick he did look, I thought okay maybe he really is full or there is something wrong with his stomach so he really can’t eat anything anymore so I caved in and said he didn’t need to finish it. BUT THEN, not long after that I see him coming out of the kitchen with a bowl of chocolate biscuits! That’s definitely not someone who is full or is having a stomach ache is it?!

Of course I know Raiyan is not deliberately lying and that actually he’d say anything just so he can get out of eating a balanced meal of rice, chicken and vegetables – I mean he is a child after all, preferring to choose junk food over wholesome foods! But I did want him to stop talking about having a stomach ache when he doesn’t because it just gives off that “the boy cried wolf” feeling and what if ia ketulahan and then banar kena bagi stomach ache when at first he didn’t have one right?

So I taught him about “lying” and the “truth”. I told him that he can’t be telling the truth when he says he’s full and can’t take any more food and then after that is stuffing his face with choc biscuits. I then asked him if the reason why he didn’t want to eat his meals is because he doesn’t like the taste of it and he said yes that was the reason. So I drilled in him that saying that he doesn’t like the food would be telling the truth and saying he has a stomach ache when he doesn’t have one is lying and NOBODY likes lies. He looked like he completely understood what I was saying and promised not to lie about having a stomach ache again.

You know what’s gonna happen next right? This morning I again caught him not eating his breakfast and I asked him why he isn’t eating it. Raiyan with pure confidence replied “I don’t like burger and that’s the TRUTH!”

LOL! What am I going to do about him??

Helloo.. whoops, who are you?

This one morning when I was dropping Raiyan off from school, I saw from afar this woman who I swore I thought was Jo but upon closer inspection realised it wasn't. It's just that she had the same blonde bob hairstyle, was wearing a pink top and khaki skirt that Jo typically wears and was roughly the same size that I don’t think you can blame anyone, including Raiyan, to make that case of mistaken identity.

But poor Raiyan who obviously got so excited as he usually does when he sees Jo didn’t realize that it wasn’t her and so he just proceeded to tap the woman with a loud greeting- “Hello!”. And as soon as she turned around, I nearly burst out laughing when I saw the slight confusion on his face! But the funny thing is he still stayed on and looked at her as this sweet lady started talking to him “Oh helloooo! How are you? Don’t you look good today?”. Raiyan smiled back to her and said he’s fine thank you and upon seeing that, for a second I actually thought “maybe they do know each other after all!”

After saying bye and being some distance away, I then asked Raiyan if he thought it was Jo and he sheepishly answered “yeeeess”! Haha! And sure enough, on my way out the lady that the Jo lookalike was talking to immediately approached me and asked “Was that Raiyan? I think he thought that was Jo!!”

The great thing about this is that before when his social skills was practically zero, he would have just walked away from that woman simply because he didn’t know her. But in this case, he still had a social conscience to politely stay on and converse back with the lady until she finished talking even though he didn’t know who on earth she is! Well done Raiyan!

Hyperactive!

There are days when Raiyan feels subdued and tired after coming back from school which I can understand since he’s been working non-stop (with school AND ABA) all morning.

But there are days like these when he just can’t keep still that I wonder if he was fed anything earlier on that makes him sooo hyperactive! If only I can enroll him in gymnastics or something like that!

STAY ACTIVE EVERYONE!

The Power of Fwenship

It's amazing how much Raiyan just adores Adik and vice versa. We even joke amongst ourselves and with Jo that when they are together, they are not autistic! Seriously!

They are always soooo excited to see each other that they must always greet each other with a hug..

They are always soooo upset to leave each other and after hugging each other good bye they both mutter to themselves "but I miss you..."

They even have fights and not speak to each other for a while and then make up and say sorry to each other..

One of them actually gets hurt if the other lashes out at the other... like really "hurt".. not the typical "tantrum" cry/scream, but a really sad pitiful "you hurt my feelings" kinda cry..

Since they are in different classes at school, they are constantly in search of one another during break time and will get distressed when the other is not around..

They are forever talking about each other to their parents or caregivers at home..

And the best part is they talk and talk and play and play non-stop when they are with each other..

I am always soo thankful for Raiyan to have found his "soulmate" at this early age because it is just amazing how similar they are in so many ways! They even had the same stims when they were younger!!! They just seem to understand each other sooo well. Sometimes whenever I start getting sad about the fact that Raiyan may not be able to have many friends or form a deep relationship, I'm always comforted with the fact that whatever happens, he will insyaAllah always have Adik..

You can read about Adik's birthday party that we went to just now at the pweshes diaries blog! Happy Birthday darling Adik! We love you soooo much!!

Learning Ladders Committee Meeting

LL society had its committee meeting at our humble abode yesterday as we have quite a number of things on our agenda and plans for the next few months. Of course, it's always lovely to meet and catch up ( I had actually missed the last official society meeting when I was away in Washington) and it was also a fun excuse for the kids to meet up and play! Unfortunately Raiyyan I and Hakeemi had therapy sessions so they weren't able to come.. but Adik and Sarah of course had a complete blast with Raiyan and Alisha!

As some of you may know, we were given a substantial amount of money out of the proceeds of the recent Toyota Classics Event so we decided to give NBT/Toyota as a token of our appreciation, this car that was made completely by our amazing "Lego Builder and Puzzle Solver" Raiyyan Iman Shamsuddin:

If you zoom into the picture, you can read some wonderful facts about this special boy! And of course you can marvel closer at his incredible work! It's simply unbelievable for a mere FIVE year old!

Oh and I can't resist making these if any of our visitors subtly mentions if they will make an appearance! Ugh, Jeff had to insist to put it right in the middle of the dinner table where we were having our meeting and it was soo hard to concentrate! Where at first they were meant for the kids, in the end we realised they were really meant for the big kids cos we almost finished them on our own!

These wonderful kids never fail to put a smile on our faces.. here they are pretending they are on a boat and that's Adik rowing..

And last but not least, here are the committee members working really hard! (Though the ladies do tend to digress here and there.. hehe.. thank god for Jeff to help stray things back into the right direction!!)

Just to share, we are planning for some activities in the next month, including something in conjunction with International Day for Persons with Disabilities and more general awareness events. We are also planning a BIG event in February in collaboration with the Special Education Unit and lastly, we are also planning for the opening of our Learning Ladders Center which will also insyaAllah happen verry soon! Wish us luck! We need all the support we can get!!