Raiyan Dolittle

This is Raiyan talking to his cousin Zaty's cats! Sometimes I do wonder if he has some secret communication with animals! Haha!

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!

Week 25 Progress

Ok I know apologies are in order as the last 2 and a half weeks has been the longest hiatus I've had in blogging on this site. Long story short, there was no internet connection in my hotel room in Queenstown (when I last wrote), neither any in Manila (where I was a week later) and then upon coming back to Brunei, I was just too busy gaining back some level of momentum with the babies, other work, reports, my workout etc etc and of course Raiyan and his therapy..

After being away for 11 days, it's no surprise that I felt quite estranged from Raiyan's programme and a tad lost with what I had to do in helping generalise the programme with him.. which is probably the main reason why I haven't blogged in a while.

But alhamdulillah I've slowly regained confidence and understanding of what I had missed during my absence. And again, I am thankful every minute for how far he has come...

• Raiyan has been promoted to Year 1! Jeff and I were actually agreeable for him to be retained in reception actually for fear that he may not be able to cope with year 1 seeing how his speech development is not all there. BUT, his teachers and therapists insisted that he does go up and that we'd be cheating him if he doesn't! It is not going to be easy I must say as the syllabuse in year 1 is quite a big leap from reception, especially in the amount of writings they do. And Raiyan absolutely HATES writing. I think it's mainly because of the endless amount of writings he had to do in his old school where he would write words that he has no comprehension of. But Jo said that he is getting better nowadays and we basically have to be more creative and show him the incentives in writing by making him write his own words or lines of stories that he is familiar with.
• His storytelling and recalling skills is really good now. You know how I've always dreamt of him telling me what he did in school. And now he's beginning to do that, though in very short sentences and he doesn't actually tell me everything he does (I would still need to double check with Jo and Kerri if what he told me was correct too!). Now we are starting to make it more specific by making him do something eg. locking the door and then 10 minutes later and half an hour later and then a day later, we ask him "Raiyan, what did you do at the door just now/yesterday?" and he would remember and say "I locked the door"
• His past tense is really good and he even knows a bunch of irregular verbs such as flew, blew, hung etc;
• His knowledge of obscure opposites is literally so advanced! He knows by heart a whole box of opposite lottos which consist of "monotone/multicoloured, witch/fairy, stationary/mobile;
• He is starting to learn to talk in proper conversations by asking questions and pausing to wait for the other person to answer;
• He has de-sensitised himself from the touch of glue and rain water. He is also a lot better with new sounds now (though I did mention that he is de-sensitised of new sounds in an earlier post, there are still times when he gets anxious though);
• He is more open to trying new foods now;
• He is so friendly (sometimes too friendly I must say) and waves and says hi to any random person he sees!

Some things we are working on more now is:

• Because he's been doing the phonetic sounds with Jo, we are finding him making the "P" sound a lot, sometimes to the extent that he'll spray when saying it to another person. I'm thinking it's a form of a stim because he tends to do this when he's bored or sometimes distressed with something. I've told him today that he has 5 more chances to do this and if I catch him doing it more than 5 times, then he's not going to Singapore Zoo (yes, a trip is imminent sometime this month!)
• He has been watching more TV than usual (well to excuse myself a bit, I was away when the increase started). So we have been cutting TV down a lot this week and found improvement in him being engaged with others since we've done that.

After this newly gained connection, can you believe that I'm leaving again for 9 days tomorrow? sob sob.. hopefully there's internet connection in Edinburgh! And I'm going to miss my babies so much!!

ABA Checklist Continued

To expand on my previous post, Linda has very effectively summarised Learning Ladders' understanding and experience on the ABA programme and I very much encourage any interested parents to read this post to get an advanced in-depth knowledge of what it is exactly we do in Learning Ladders in terms of providing therapy and assistance to our children.

Please don't believe everything you hear

Dear Parents,

I was recently alarmed to hear stories of opportunists falsely claiming themselves to be ABA consultants/therapists. ABA or applied behaviour analysis, which I am sure you know by now, is the type of therapy that our children at Learning Ladders, including Raiyan, employs. At the same time, I am not all that surprised since with the rising rates of autism, and with ABA having gained a credible reputation to be scientifically proven to help children with autism progress, naturally there will be those reckless few who would outwardly declare that they are qualified to draw up and implement such ABA programmes when they are absolutely not in the position to do so.

Perhaps some elements of ABA are sometimes practised; such as rewarding and reinforcing good behaviour, making the child look at you when you talk to him and where possible vice versa and making use of puzzles and flash cards. But I urge all parents out there, please do not think that this is the extent of ABA. I can safely say that this is DEFINITELY not the extent of what Raiyan has been following for the past 6 months as it vastly surpasses all that I have mentioned. Not only is the programme VERY VERY systematic in the chronological order of things being taught, drills are also carefully structured so as to keep the interest of the child and massive amounts of data, in terms of skills that are introduced, mastered, generalised and maintained are accurately recorded at EVERY therapy session. The resources used also change ALL the time (Raiyan has not an item more than once since he started therapy). And, each session must last AT LEAST 2 hours at a time.

That's as far as I know to share my experience with ABA through undergoing Raiyan's programme. Please, please I encourage parents to read in more detail what is required of an ABA consultant and therapist from this Learning Ladders post. Best of luck!

Old Challenges, New Successes!

Today Raiyan did two new things that he never even tried to do before!

1. We had lunch at pizza hut and instead of "just" chips which he would always have and nothing else, today he had BOTH chocolate milkshake (which he kept calling chocolate ice cream and eating it with a spoon!) AND a slice of pizza!

Yummy Chocolate Milkshake!

Ok, let's try a bit of this pizza, then... hmm not bad!

The best thing was it didn't take much for us to convince him to try these foods too! He actually showed interest himself to try them! It's simply amazing!

2. Then Raiyan had a go on these animal rides in front of utama grand. Before, he was so so terrified of these things and not only did he not want to go on them, he would avoid going near them altogether! But just now, he did show some reluctance for about 2 minutes but after seeing Alisha on it, he decided to just go on it and did he enjoy himself or what!

Hopefully he'll be open minded to try out more new things in the future! Amin!

Play Doh Farmer

This is Raiyan's farmer which he independently made with his playdoh birthday present. Since he has mixed all of the colours in the set to make a rainbow, the result of all those mixed colours is now this mucky green.. which to me makes this farmer a tad freaky looking.. I thought it looked more like a scarecrow, but Raiyan was quick to correct me (the corrector that he is) and still insisted that it is a farmer!

Oh and the horse and the cow next to the farmer is from the counting animals book that babah bought him for his birthday present!

Friday's ISB Motor Skills Programme

Raiyan had such a BLAST at yesterday's motor skills programme at ISB seeing how he hasn't gone for almost a month (due to chicken pox and school holidays). If you don't know, this programme is part of the activities that Learning Ladders members get to enjoy. You can read more about the whole Learning Ladders Programme here. He was having so much fun and I was so delighted to see him talking and communicating with everyone there :D:D

Of course Raiyan was excited to see all his buddies and friends. ("Buddies" are the IB students who play and mind them at the playground). When asked beforehand, he said he wants to see Adek, Danial, Fadhil, Raiyyan I and Haris (all of them are featured on the cover of any Learning Ladders publications a.k.a Learning Ladders Models!). Upon arriving ISB he immediately saw Chris, one of the volunteers and said "Hi Chris!" and went on to hold Chris' hand!

Then Chris said "Raiyan, I have to go open the gate (of the playground)"

Since we were at the entrance of ISB and that gate was open, Raiyan then said "But the gate is open!"
Chris and I both laughed and explained to him that Chris needs to open the gate of the playground.. hehehe

At the playground, I actually overheard Raiyan telling Chris and Rajiv (his IB buddies) "Babah and mama took me to the beach!" Hehe pandai lagi becerita2 tu!

As I have previously told in past stories, Raiyan is being kinda clingy with Adek (Sharina's son) now so the whole time before Adek came, he kept saying "Where's Adek? Find Adek!" So when Adek finally came, Chris straight away told Raiyan "Raiyan! I found Adek!". And everyone came clamouring around to see the long expected reunion of these 2 best friends. These are the pweshes shots I got of Raiyan as soon as he saw Adek: AAWWWW....

This is Adek and Raiyan going on the new "bumper" cars that Learning Ladders have purchased for the children:

The funniest thing I overheard with Raiyan was him going up to Adek who has just finished eating his crisps whilst sat at the table and not really wanting to play just yet.

Raiyan: Adek, do you want to get on the car?

Adek: No

Raiyan: Why not? You finished your crisps...

Haha memajal lagitu! I think I know where he gets that from (erm..his mama).

I can tell that Raiyan really craves to have friends with him all the time now. So much that he would wave some random child of his age when he's in the car or he would say hello to them at shops! So sweet.. we just have to teach him more social skills to enable him to sustain the friendship!

Week 21 Progress

Alhamdulillah, Raiyan can't seem to shut up these days. I never dreamt and envisioned how this can happen so soon but our family is eternally grateful that he's actually reached this point now. Sure, sometimes he talks and talks with no inkling of whether or not his audience is attuned to what he's saying, but for us, just hearing actual, comprehensible words coming out of mouth and for him to initiate conversations with others is just heavenly. (Attunement can come later...:D)

Raiyan had his half term break away from school the whole of last week, which meant that he needed extra attention from us at home, in what I can only perceive to be him trying to compensate what he's obviously missing from school. Hence, the endless questions and requests ensues throughout.. If it's not him wanting to draw together, it's him wanting to make rainbows with the play-doh, or him wanting to "sikut"(said with an English accent of course) and chase Alisha and many others, incessantly asked until we adults have to put down whatever we are doing and indulge him with his many wants. He really doesn't take no for an answer! (Note: Yes, we recognise the need to work more on this.. but it's sooo hard! With him talking, he's a hundred times more adorable and it's sooo easy to just give in!!)

Anyway, his progress lately:

1. Kerri says that he's just a whisker away from being able to answer "how" questions. Her only advice is for us parents to try and generalise it more. In particular, we have to make sure that he doesn't answer with "because", which is actually how he starts off answering any question these days! As I mentioned in the previous progress post, Raiyan can describe how to blow a balloon, and blow bubbles etc. I admit to be lacking in the creativity department lately in trying to think of other situations I can ask Raiyan to describe and so I've been relying too much on the flashcards. Since Raiyan already has gone through the flashcards millions of time (since he's getting 17 hours a week now), he very very reluctantly and very quickly answers my how questions and immediately after shouts "No, I DON'T!"
2. His receptive understanding of the Malay language is getting a lot better. The other day in the car, Alisha was crying out for her Barney DVD to be played so I said "Mana ada TV dalam kereta Lish" and then Raiyan continued for me "Only music Alisha". And yesterday, my mum told how she and Ida and Nor were talking amongst themselves saying "mana tia animals nya ani" and Raiyan all the way on the other side of the room yelled "the animals are here!" hahaha.. see not only can't we underestimate his receptive understanding these days, but the same thing also goes for his amazing hearing!
3. His therapy programme is still working on the tenses mainly. He can uniformly answer this sequence of questions now: (when asked to clap his hands) i. before clapping you ask "what are you going to do?" R: "I'm going to clap my hands". ii. when clapping you ask "what are you doing?" R:"I am clapping my hands" and iii. after he claps you ask "what did you do?"R: I clapped my hands."We have to continue generalising this in other situations (see more on the past tense below) and also we need to work more on the past tense of irregular verbs such as "blew", "ate", "hung" and "drank."
4. On past tenses, I am slowly seeing him being able to tell me about what he did earlier that day. One of my dreams is for Raiyan to tell me about what he did in school. And because we've started him on past tense, I think he's slowly getting it. Yesterday I asked him and he said "train book. go to north pole. party. polar bear." then he steered off in his normal ways as to where a polar bear lives etc etc.. sigh... (the first part was correct though because I DO know they are reading a book about a train in class);
5. On that note, another thing we are working with is trying to make him stick to ONE conversation. Raiyan loves to go off on a tangent when talking to others and a lot of times, answers our questions probably 3 of them at most and then starts talking away about something else (more than often, it would be about animals!). So everyone talking to Raiyan has to make sure that he's following the conversation through to the end. This will hopefully help him being able to have typical conversations with others.
6. Babah bought a "counting animals" book and Auntie Wen Wen bought him playdoh for his birthday (which was on Monday btw-my big baby is 5 years old!) and naturally he insisted to bring it everywhere yesterday (Tuesday). Kerri said to just let him because he's just likely to want to show others (just like typical kids) as opposed to the items being the flavour of the week. And true enough, this morning I told him he can't bring the stuff to school again and he said "okay".

Some speech improvement stories:

- Nenek girl wanted Alisha to salam her good bye and Alisha was being cranky and refused to do so. Then Raiyan nyampuk "Nenek, Alisha says no. She don't want to salam. Alisha's too BUSY (again, imagine real posh brit accent)" Thankfully my mother in law saw the humour in it and laughed. Raiyan apa lagi, iski lah and kept on saying it again and again, and again.. hehe

-Whenever I'm about to go to the gym, I ask him "why does mama go to the gym" he would say "to exercise!"

-My parents' old television is acting up these days so sometimes it just switches off by itself. Whenever that happens, instead of getting frustrated, Raiyan just says "Oh, TV is tired. give ten minutes to rest!"

As I mentioned, Raiyan has gone up to 17 hours a week (he started with 11) so insyaAllah, this will help drill in the learning materials quicker and easier.. Amin!

Till next week!

Learning to be Independent

Raiyan helping himself to his favourite glass of cold chocolate milk, diluted with fresh milk.. Well Done Raiyan!

YUMMMMMEEE!!!!