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Proud Father Of 2 Kids, started this blog to extend my sharing to benefit more people for positive and fulfilling life, thanks to an advise from a teacher in Special School. Encouragement looks at what we can be and believes in the best for each of us. It is also love in action, allowing one to take time to meditate on small miracles of life, to build confidence in ourselves and build that confidence in others as well.

Saturday, March 30, 2013

6th World Autism Awareness Day 2013

We are less than 3 days away from the day, 2 April for 2013 World Autism Awareness Day in local time, this year will be its 6th year since this annual awareness movement first started in 2008.  Recalling my first WAAD back in 2009 when I was a young parents of a child in the spectrum, while my little STAR had just commenced his EIP in Jan that year and was only in the beginning of Term 2 of his new learning journey at a age of three and a half years of age, non verbal with concrete skill level.  .
 
I posted a picture of him in the WAAD website to show our support for him and also dedicated a poem in his name to share with his teachers who were doing great work with us collectively to progress him inch by inch, slowly and surely.
We are always hopeful that with right support and good collaborative habits with the SPED Team, we can further maximize his learning potential, anything new for anybody, it will always be difficult before it become easy.  Steps by steps we did, try try try, explain and explain again, practise and more practise and still do until today, keeping our faith as we path forward with him.
4 years on, we have been enriched by the joy he brings to us and the family.  Critical success factors is being able to do it right, right from the beginning with a positive attitude, right frame of mind and open heart. Having  good support from my immediate family and extended members of the other family help reduce our effort not forgetting great teachers, therapists that we have been blessed along the journey.
Autism has become our way of life, everything from its manifestation has become so normal to me. Though every year April is Autism Awareness month, but for our family, it is every moment of life we live on a day by day basis.  We are poorer finanacially but also richer at heart in term of values of living life in another perspective:- more compassionate, kind, understanding, patience, loving, courageous in facing difficulties or challenges and being thankful and forgiving etc...
Experience is not what happens to a man, it is what a man does with what happens to him. By supporting this statement, he has also brought out the best of us in every of our journey with him.  He has come this far not by chance but with his own determination and strength to persevere with the help & great support of the SPED Team both in EIP & also in his current primary education.
Life is never perfect, there will always be challenges, obstacles and less than perfect conditions.... 
The only way around it is to "Get started now!!!" With each step you take, you will grow stronger, more skilled, more self-confident and YES..... more successful! Being a special need parent, I am drafted to be every person that I can model after the SPED Team, whether teacher, therapist or pschologist or socialogist, each parent being the case manager of child with special needs.  The energy I expended is far more than 10 times each moment I journey with him to over challenges as they unfold in his growing up and learning journey, but I am also very thankful for all the friendships that I get connected via social media where I can share and also find encouragement, inspiration and strength, to deposit my positive energy back to my heart before the next release.  Without him, I will not have cross path with so many great teachers and parents, special educators, therapists proferssionals to whom I cherish and value.  
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We are ready to light it up blue for him and others in this special community, to cheer them on, to give them all the best support and encouragement that they need.
I am looking forward to 5th April road show in Ion Orchard to commemorate this awareness event and also to attend an Autism seminar the next day at my son special school.

Winner's Statement:-
Autism is about the journey not the destination, it is a way of living in moments of small achievements and not just at the destination. It is lived in small steps along the way, it is not how much one live but how much love we put into living.

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