April Moment - Sharing Our Joy Of Living

Rituals are the lenses through which we see our emotional connections to each other, to a culture, to a higher power. They are symbolic expressions of our most sacred values. A way of giving our child a sense of calming & stability and belonging.

Share some photos of rituals that we enjoy as a family on and off the routine whenever the opportunity arises, is to have meal together in the community. That is also when our little STAR exercise his independent skill of taking his own food.

April kicks off the Autism Awareness Month, is also a month feels with gratitude, appreciation and great anticipation in our walk with our little STAR as we ready him for his education placement assessment as a first baby step toward transition out process. Release another montage to capture my little STAR last 1 year of learning journey to celebrate 4th WAAD, play my little part in sharing some movie & video clips of Autism to help raise some awareness via social networking among the friends I know.

Back in Feb during the Chinese New Year reunion, while his sister and cousins were playing snake and ladder, he was just merely observing. In April, he made another break through by playing the same snake and ladder game with sister & the family:- turn taking, asking and answering rules of the questions during game, manipulating movement and counting. Each game last about 20-25minutes. A good practise of join engagement and great ritual to finish the day before his bed time.

We were also glad that he had managed to sit through by himself with the psychologist, motivated and engaged with the assessment process.

We will continue to work hard in giving him every opportunity he needs to elevate his social skill which could bring him to the next level of learning journey.

The Easter holiday was also a great season for him to exercise gratitude & take blessing in giving to show appreciation to teachers.

His EIP school Term outing was another exciting highlights in April which we enjoy going with him. This time the theme WATER has brought the children to East Coast Park beach to enjoy the water play.

The children get to do their worksheets while waiting for teachers to set up the game stations.

The sun give his much blessing while the children took part in relay games of filling the bottle with water, shooting cup with water gun and making sand castle cup, with their parents and care givers cheering them on.

We had lunch at KFC before boarding the bus for our return journey back to ARC.

Our little STAR got to experience playing on the flying fox at one indoor playground on the last day of April. Once he got hold of the way to play, he start to engage on the fox and will try again for several more times as he feels empowered with confidence.

We ended the indoor gym play with an ice cream cup to disengage him.

It was another good month of great memories, life is beautiful when we make all his moment counts.

Winner's Statement:-

When your thoughts are geared in a positive direction, your feeling are peaceful. ~ Richard Carlson

Weaknesses Are Strengths

Winners Statement:-

Patience with others is Faith, Patience with self is Hope, Patience with Autism is Love.

Autism Awareness Month - April 2011

Autism is a life long developmental disability that affects how a person communicates with, and relates to, other person, and how they maike sense of the world around them.

The disability may be mild, moderate or severe. Some are verbal, others are not. Some may be intellectually impaired; but others can be high in cognition and possess special talents.

It is estimated that 1 in 167 persone has some form of autism in Singapore or a prevalence rate of about 30,000 people with autism in a population of 5 million for Singapore.

It has been about close to 3 years since my little STAR has been diagnosed under this spectrum. As he began his learning journey, things were difficult and we were also taking on a steep learning curve in this special walk with him. Today we can only be thankful for every little inch stone progress he has made thus far in EIP. Nevertheless, we must always be ready to embrace new challenges as he progresses, with the enemies he faces at each stage of development.

Taking stock of his enemies

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1) Rigidity- which has improved over time with visual rules, task schedule to enhance his predictability, and lately with the help of social story. But other form of rigidity challenges still exist such as the way he do his work routine, any slight changes he may get upset easily. We still need to persevere in this aspect and draw a fine balance between can't do or won't do. If he can & when he refuses, we will try give half of what he asks and take away half of what he desires to exercise some flexibility with caution to progress him surely but slowly.

2) Functional Communication - often have melt down in the beginning of his learning journey but less often nowadays as he picks up words, short phrase. The challenges lie in practising him to generalize request among adults & teachers for help or express himself appropriately & promptly in time of trouble or anxiety. He will always resort to shouting across and other weird behavior to seek attention, we need to persistently remind him and if he does wrong, repeat the right way of doing before moving forward to next task or routine.

3) Sensory perception - balance, sense of position and awareness in space, gross motor, scanning has improved over the last 1 and a half years but still got great potential to improve on managing sensory overload in a noisy and big environment.

4) Social Interaction- While he is strong with attention on 1-1 from working with his various therapists and work with tr as well, he will often saps into negative behavior or get socially disconnected when working with others friend in group of 3. We need to persevere to over come this to make a break through into the next level of progress. We may use social story/rules and lots of patience to strike a fine balance between the other 3 enemies that were mentioned earlier on to maximize a good out come.

2 April is 4th WAAD, we had paid a visit to an exhibition called Art For Autism at my little STAR school to mark the occasion and promote awareness among my sibling family and his cousins.

It was an awesome display of 8 talented students who uncover their strength in drawing and model making. We were impressed by all the exhibits especially one on the "New York City Blocks"

After the exhibit, we visited the mall in which I bought a new book call Beautiful Mind vol 2 for my little princess and another "Kevin's World" A story about Autism plus a pack of greeting cards.

As we were prepared to walk out, my sister happened to see and read the quarterly newsletter pasted along the walk way entrance, and were excited to see few photos of our little STAR from the recent outing in Term 1.

It was a fun filled activities, though the duration was short but the enriching experience was more than worth the cause. We had dinners near by before went home still awe by the art display.

Winner's Statement:

Autism is about having a pure heart and being very sensitive… It is about finding a way to survive in an overwhelming, confusing world… It is about developing differently, in a different pace and with different leaps.

Sharing The 10 Concepts In The Area Of Motivation On Child With Special Needs

1) All human behavior is motivated. Even a child who appears to be unmotivated is actually motivated. Eg A child's refusal to participate in class group activities may be motivated by his fear of limited social skill and vocabulary to communicate.

2) Tangible rewards may create temporary behavioral changes, but rewards are unlikely to increase the child's motivation. Rewards then become the primary source of motivation and not our original intend to motivate.

3) Learning and attention problems have a marked impact on child motivation. Need to invest time, love & hope to support them in overcoming failure & fustration and to increase their confidence, be encourage & willing to invest themselves in academic pursuit despite the great challenges ahead.

4) Competition is an ineffective motivational approach by most children with special needs, most of the time. The only person motivated by competition is the person who feels he has a chance of winning.

5) Motivation is greatly impact by primary physical needs. If a child's physical needs(hunger, thirst, safety, etc...)are unmet, the child will be less motivated to learn, the physiological(mind/body) sensations caused by thiese unmet needs will overshadow and over power her motivation to learn.

6) Students have unique, individual patterns of motivation. Activities and approaches that are highly motivational for one child may be totally ineffective with another.

7) Coaching techniques are often effective in motivating the child who struggle academically. The responsive, individualized, structured techniques used in coaching often provide the child with a balance of supportand challenges that he needs inorder to learn.

8) Punishment like reward, will result in temporary behavioral changes, but will do little to foster motivation. If the child has a geniune learning problems that prevent him from mastering the target material, the use of punishment is unfair, inappropriate and ineffective.

9) The only effective, long-term motivator of human behavior is success. When a child experiences success in academic or social tasks, he/she becomes increasingly motivated to expereince more and greater success. The success serve to inspire the child to reach his/her greater potential, but only when the child feels that his initial success is geniune and earned.

10) In order for the person to be motivated to invest himself/herself in an activity, 3 factors must be present:- a. He/she must feel the goal is attractive b. He/she must feel that the amount of effort required to meet the goal is realistic c. he/she must feel that it is likely that she can accomplish the goal.

All 3 factor must be present to maximize motivation, else the child will be less motivated.

Take this blessing to share my beautiful seed in his past 1 years of learning journey;-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-zEVTEK9-E

Tomorrow, April 2nd is World Autism Awareness Day. Although some of us live with Autism everyday, most people have difficulty understanding what living with Autism really means. Since children with autism often physically look like other kids, it can be like having an invisible disability.

People tend to be afraid of what they don’t understand. Awareness has the power to change people’s attitudes from “Ugh, I can’t believe that kid is behaving so badly” to “is there anything I can do to help?” Hope to play my part as I embrace my little STAR for his little success.

Each person with autism is unique with their own challenges ranging from no speech or communication with extreme behaviors, to highly verbal and difficulty with social language and situations. The one thing that ALL people have in common is that everyone wants to be loved, accepted and included. Don’t be afraid of Autism. Dare to be aware, and embrace a child or family with Autism today.

Winner's Statement:-

3 E: Energy, Enthusiasm, Empathy

3 C: Compassion, Courage, Consideration

3 P: Patience, Persistence, Perseverence

Above all: LOVE