August in a tizzy

This month last year, the boy started with his early intervention programme at Kids Cove. Twelve months on, and from reviewing his past Individualized Education Programme (IEP), I can see that he's gone a long way.

I remember how frustrating it was to have a conversation with him before because he was still not talking spontaneously, but now it is heartening to see him getting all talkative and excited when we have a guest in the house. Last night, I had a friend over for dinner and the boy was making all sorts of comments about the salad, the rice and the soup. Some of his responses were still a bit vague, but I am happy to hear more appropriate comments from him.

Last year, he cannot even write lines properly and with a lot of patience (from me) and persistence (from him), he is now able to write independently. It's nice to hear him ask for our writing activity when he's bored and considers it a treat if I can do it with him.

Because of these improvements, we decided that he needs more specific therapy to address his challenges on his speech and social skills. He now goes to Kids Cove three times per week, plus weekly speech therapy, social skills therapy and occupational therapy. It's all expensive as we have to get private therapists to get more frequent follow-up sessions. The government's therapists are in short supply and it does not make sense to wait for them before the next therapy session is available.

But we are surviving.

I think God's Divine Providence is really at work. I sometimes wonder how in spite of all our therapy expenses, we still have something left over for dining out and movies. 

My friend (who did not know any better) asked me how long my child was going to need therapy. I thought the question was a bit insensitive, but obviously, from my friend's background, he did not have a slightest idea about how autism affects an individual. I just said, "as long as he needs it." I do not know how long we can financially sustain his therapies, but as long as we can, we will. Parents make the best advocates AND therapists.

Our home therapy programme is also more varied now, as he is able to interact and follow instructions better. We do activities to help improve his comprehension, concepts of categories, causality and speech.

Also, since the water colour workshop that we did a month back, he is more open to doing art projects.

The wet on wet technique is good because it allows room for mistakes, and these mistakes turn out to make the piece more interesting.

This rainbow taught him a thing about creating new colours. That violet comes from red and blue, that orange comes from red and yellow.

Javier's first rainbow water color painting. I blurred out our family name for security reasons.

This one was a guided piece. I held his hand so that he would be able to control his movement. He stubbornly resisted my guidance and at some point, I let him go on his own in doing what he wanted to do with the pears. If you look closer, he even wrote number 1, 2 and 3 on the pears using his yellow crayon. I held his hand as he signed his name.

Still life. Javier calls this "1-2-3 Pears"

This last piece, he draw the star first using the white crayon. That explains why the water colour was able to resist the star outline so well. After the star has been drawn, I guided him as he wet the paper with water and continued to colour the paper. The red and yellow was contained neatly in the star with the help of the crayon. We used wet on wet technique and just let the colours run into each other and create this trippy pattern on the paper.

He just calls this "Star"

Let's hope he continues to like doing water colour art and to allow me to guide him.