Conversations

Little A has started lessons with a new speech therapist recently. This one is trained in what appears to be the newest thing - oral motor therapy.  The first few sessions did serve to make my son more aware of what his mouth can do, as I would see him in front of the mirror making faces, and his sound output increased.

This summer, however, the teacher has shifted to a different tactic. One session Little A was frustrated and couldn't find the words he wanted to use in his communication book. Teacher pulled out is iPad and asked my son to type out what was on his mind. The result was this, with my notes following the dashes:

jump swim nick jr seal

i want watch  nick jr nelvana

-- Teacher told him there was no internet. Later, Little A indicated he wanted to use the toilet so he went, and when he got back to the therapy room the teacher asked him what he did:

i pee
i wash hands

-- Teacher asked what Little A wanted to do next:

ipad

watch watch nickelodeon

-- Teacher said there was still no internet so Little A got mad and spat on the floor (one of the unfortunate side-effects of oral motor exercises, he does this now when he is angry.) He promptly got a tissue, and Teacher asked him what he did next:

wipe

i am angry

i want to see mommy

letis go home

-- Teacher was very pleased to report the outcome of the session to me. I asked him to please email me the transcripts after each session, and questioned him closely about the level of prompting given to Little A in crafting his replies (none to reply, but sometimes Teacher would spell out a word correctly.) I told him Little A could figure it out phoenetically with minimal help.

This seems to be the pattern their sessions will take over the next few weeks. While it may be far from the regular chatty six-year-old conversations, for now, this is enough for us. Let's hope it can be sustained.

Skater Boy

Two Christmases ago, Little A was obsessed with skateboards. There were two skate shops near our flat, and he spent afternoons hanging out with the skaters and watching them practise.

It made sense then, to get him a "training" board for Christmas. I'd been eyeing one at the hardware store, that came with a sturdy handle, making it a scooter of sorts that could later be converted into a proper skateboard. Big A and I managed to get the very last one in the city.

Come Christmas morning, 2012, Little A was more interested in the ribbon tied round his present than the actual scooter/board. He did a few experimental rounds inside the house, but by and large the board was a sitting mat for most of the following year.

In December 2013, however, something must have clicked. One day Little A took interest in his scooter and wanted to try it outside. He practised and practised, and soon got his balance on the board and figured out how to turn and stop. This became an afternoon ritual, on coming home from school, and on weekends. Whenever he needed to take a break from his devices, playing outside usually meant being on the scooter with me or the Au Pair chasing after him.

In a few months he's nearly outgrown the handle, which sadly does not adjust its length the way those Razors do. But he's still enjoying his board, and hopefully will carry on when it turns into a skateboard. Now to buy a helmet.

A Cat and His Boy

I recently read the most tedious homage to CS Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia. It ranked as one of the top young adult sellers on Amazon the year it was released, and I couldn't see why. If it wasn't for my inability to put down a book without finishing it, awful as it may be, this one would have been consigned to the rubbish heap within the first few chapters.

Still, I appreciate how this author was so strongly influenced by Lewis's children's classics, a series I hope Little A enjoys one day.

In the meantime, in the few days of holidays he had before summer school, Little A and his cat had some fun. Once summer school started, he came home and looked for the cat first thing, as he did on waking up, before going to sleep, and countless times in between. He wants the cat to always be within his line of sight, if not arm's reach.

Meanwhile despite having been neutered, Kitty is quite aggressive and fancies himself a dog. He play-attacks people coming into the flat for the first time, and pounces on their belongings. The Au Pair is his especial favourite, followed by myself, and we both bear scars on both legs from scratches. With Little A though, he is never aggressive. I suppose in that relationship, he knows who is the master. 

End of Term, Part 3

Another academic year has ended, Little A's first at the school he will attend for as long as we can afford to send him there.

Less than a month prior to the end of term, the school sent home uniforms for the children to wear. They had been coming to school in casual clothes until then, apart from a t-shirt they were encouraged but not required to wear on Wednesdays, so I don't think I was the only parent who worried about how to coax her child into the new uniform.

Little A has always been picky about fabrics, and has never yet tolerated denim jeans. He resists wearing sweaters and jackets (though this is likely because they are entirely unnecessary in our part of the world) and socks with his shoes.

Big A suggested he remain out of uniform for a week, so he would notice how he was the only one in school still wearing regular clothes. On photo day though, he had no other choice.

The people at school were clever, and allowed for one "rehearsal" day before the two photo days, and I managed to get Little A (crying and whining) into the school shirt for this day. The next day, he put on the trousers as well, to my delight, with minimal complaints, and wore them all day.

I didn't breathe a sigh of relief just yet, as my son has been known to tolerate things for a short term and then refuse them forevermore afterwards. But as the days passed, he put on his school uniform every day without a struggle for the last three weeks of classes. Fridays were kept as plain clothes days, to my delight. (Handwashing those two sets of trousers and shirts thrice a week to get them dry in time for the next day was always a little stressful.)

His official photos are now proudly on display at home, to remind him that come August he will need to don the uniform again every day. I only hope he hasn't outgrown the trousers by then. 

Bali High

Beach weekends - ahh, bliss. It's been a long time since I was in the presence of sun, sand, and surf together. The last time was when Little A was barely 3. Now I got lucky two weekends in a row.

A few weeks ago, Big A and I were invited by friends to spend a night at a members-only beach resort just 25 minutes away from the city by small plane. We'd visited the place when it was under construction but didn't like the payment package (it's a time share sort of deal) so we didn't have access to the place except by invitation. It was my first time to see the finished resort.

We spent just under 48 hours living the island life. All too soon, it was back to the daily grind. But only for another five days.

The day before we left for the private resort, Big A booked us a trip to Bali for the following weekend on the spur of the moment. We'd never been, and now was as good a time as any since resort prices were heavily discounted. I was busy with Little A's end of term coming up, plus the household chores that needed to be done since we would be gone two weekends in a row - groceries, paying bills, lots of laundry, and pre-cooking food for Little A and the Au Pair that could be easily heated while we were away. So I left the Bali itinerary entirely up to Big A, helped by a dear friend who'd recently spent a week there.

Bali was charming, and made me realise how far the Philippine beach resorts lagged behind, despite being so much better in terms of sand and marine life than their other Asian counterparts. We stayed in Seminyak, an area populated with one-storey boutiques and interesting open-air bars and restaurants. The cocktails were sublime.

While summer is drawing to a close in our part of the world, Little A's holidays are only beginning. With luck, we can squeeze another beach trip into the calendar before the rains come and the new academic year begins.

Market Day

Last week was Market Day at Little A's school. The students had spent several weeks of their arts and crafts time making things to sell - bookmarks, paperweights, rain sticks and trinket boxes. The culmination was to be a shopping day when parents were invited to purchase the merchandise.

Each child had a specific task - showing customers the product catalogue (we would remove a photo of the item/s we wanted and place it/them on a strip, or a virtual shopping basket), finding the correct items (think Jeff Bezos's Amazon warehouse on a minuscule scale, manned entirely by special needs staff), ringing up the sales (with the aid of a calculator), making change (using a fantastic maths chart) and bagging the purchases for delivery (via child-size shopping trolley) to the customers who waited across the room.

One mother described it perfectly when she said it was just like "shopping from an Argos catalogue." We were all delighted to see our children performing "real", functional tasks.

Little A was a bagger. I was amazed at how long he sat still, waiting for items to put in the brown paper sacks. Some of the items were a bit bulky and heavy, resulting in tears to the brown paper, but all ended well.

I know other schools have regular market days, when parents buy or bake and children sell the items for profit, without all the Argos-catalogue assistance. But given the challenges facing Little A and his peers, this was a special achievement for them, one they will now conduct yearly, and have every right to think of with pride. 

Life of A

One of the traits autistic individuals have is that they lack imagination. In children, this is one of the red flags. Often they mimic, but they have difficulty creating their own play scenes.

Little A fell into that category, and perhaps still does. But that doesn't mean he will remain in that box. Perhaps he is maturing emotionally, perhaps we're doing something right as parents and teachers, but recently he has been more imaginative.

Since he is non-verbal, he can't easily express what is on his mind, but we see it in his play.

Over Easter break, he watched certain parts of Ang Lee's film "Life of Pi" several times. He loves animals and water, and often takes toys into the pool and tub.

I haven't seen the movie in full, though I have read the book, so I was surprised when one day I peeked in on Little A in the tub and saw the bathroom floor covered in water.

As I watched, he filled his plastic bucket carefully, carried it to the edge of the tub, and tipped the water onto the floor. A tiger and several animals floated in the tub. The Au Pair rushed in and said, "You are not Pi!" and came back with a mop.

Apparently there is a scene when the lifeboat needs bailing out, and the main character does this with a bucket. So this was Little A's recreation of the scene. He has also tried, but failed, to get the cat into the tub with him, since he doesn't have a real live tiger.

Then last weekend, he set up his train set - the tunnel is his favorite - and a few days later asked me to help build some of his farm set. He also took out the Sesame Street building that is a modern version of one I had as a child. (Sadly, my aunt and cousins never returned the toys we lent them.) I looked into his room and saw that he had created his own scene. Certainly it wasn't one I'd ever seen in any of his books or shows.

He plays with this little diorama, but is careful to put the toys back in their places, instead of packing away. For now, this is his play land. It might not be what other almost-seven-year olds do, but my eight and a half year old typical godson was playing with the same toys on his last visit, so I don't think Little A is stuck in an earlier developmental play stage. Now to get some dialogue going into the next play scenes.