Mar Holidays Bliss 2015

Flowers & Leaves Obervation at Botanic Garden

It was a hot Saturday morning, what a beautiful garden we have in Singapore attracting many local and foreign tourists. Manage to capture many interesting targets:-

Truely a Garden City !

My little hero is not an adventurous type, will push my limits at time when he is tired, he prefer gallopping on my back after walking for some distant. Guess he is more indoor type of person.

Back at home, we do observe and enjoy similar nature in tree planting.  Probably a good habit and beautiful seed cutlivated when our first PM planted the first tree on this city state 5 decades back.

Hey Chef!

Mommy not working and hence asked if he will like to cook and work on something he likes, to break away from the normal routine of academic work, computer play and youtubing. Both first went shopping to buy ingredient and ready for actions to cook pasta.

Step by step, he did his act and I was amazed when my wife sent me the video, he did it, well done!

We are so proud of him.

Having breakfast for 3 of us before the start of beautiful Friday.

Animal to ready Term 2 - What a Fish? We brought him for an outing to Sentosa SEA Aquarium

He was excited, it has been  a while since he last visited the place.

 

He had another great experience feeling for the starfish, sea cucumber.

It was a great outing altogether with some memories converted and captured during this short one week holidays.

Look forward to Term 2 learning journey and coming celebration for World Autism Awareness Day,  its gonna be another enriching April month.

Winner's Statement:-

Term 1 2015 Random Happiness

It seems just yesterday that I submitted my blog post to welcome the New Year 2015 and now in fact we had concluded Term 1, how time flies. So thankful that my little hero has come this far of the journey with more potential to explore and maximize further.

Today I had met up with his form teacher and had a fruitful discussion with her about how we envision more great success stories for every child in coming days with the right intervention and prompt mitigation through good collaborative & co-operative efforts among parents & sped educators.. Several hidden agendas were unfold and we shared how we can redirect negative reaction into appropriate response for the child to improve outcome, the IEP goals were reasonable with some hard work need to be expended to elevate his learning outcome.  Kuodos to the SPED Team !

Success is not necessarily what you have achieved. Sometimes it is what you have overcome. The last 10 weeks had  been several inch stone progress for him to count his blessing. More aware in space, more talkative in partner communication, more expressive language projected with some unwanted behavior corrected. More daily living skill converted in taking shower more independently, on top of toiletry habits he had already mastered previously.

One certainly is his mum's birthday, i bought a simple cake to get him sing and blow candles with her, notice that both kids are growing up faster and taller than we will wish for. 

Practice practice and practice, practice make improvement.  There is no short cut for him, everything other children learn naturally, he needs to be taught and to practice more repetition to gain confident.  Work is always in progress with model to show the right, scaffold to ask back questions and guide along, let it go for greater independence, explain to improve further understanding. With the right approach tailor to his learning needs, we hope it can help to elevate his visualization in making the mind see things that eyes cannot see. 

Beside work there are moment of play and family bonding too!

Chinese New Year had been another great experience for him from reunion dinner out to playing game with cousin to visiting relatives with grandparents and collecting Ang Pow.

During our own reunion at home, he even insisted to be chef by putting on a white cap and started to cook for us, he is probably influenced by one of his favourite show on Channel 8 Hey Chef !  We went with his flow and praised him for the food well cook, it was yummy in our tummy the meat, veggies, sausages etc..

Success breed success, his mum went on to work with him on another cooking activities few weeks after, making baked rice.

People who are succeeding in some aspect of their life are succeeding because they’re giving this aspect  “extra energy” in the form of “increased power of intention.”

Instead of just merely thinking about their dreams with just a little bit of energy – they’re  passionately believing in their dreams –  and passionately doing habits moving towards their dreams. . We just gonna keep putting that extreme energy into our power of intention to hope that the dream will one day bare fruits of independence for him and also bring positive impact to others in need.

When we work we work hard, but when come to play, we will try every effort to play harder.

Above top pictures were taken after he trikked wiith me & running buddies for 5.7km. Above bottom, basket ball session on one Sunday morning, still hope to have more regular sessions over weekend.

To leverage his deficit in social skill, we engaged him on a weekly social group therapy session to improve this aspect of learning. It has been coming to 3 years and we are very grateful to the therapists and the children in the group to co-create another opportunity to engage in this mutual learning. Every week we would accumulate the visual drawings during parent empowerment debrief via whatapp by a parent to all parents. We value this weekly commitment and marvel at his smiles of happiness from each session with love.

Visit to Navy Open House, havng some photo taken and explore social space through the community.

This is so true after having walk with him since 2009, he has not only help me to see life in different perspective but help me in my work at well to response & think positively, adapt readily to changes and  never give up when facing challenging moment and difficulties.

He will be kept busy with holiday home program engagement, school homework packages, outing to explore science, sport in exercising and more practice to revise Term 1 subjects and generalize life skill being taught.

  

We will soon approaching April, a month to look forward every year to celebrate, spread and support Autism Awareness and embrace this special community.

World Autism Awareness in Singapore is now in its 5th year running !

2 April is declared by UN General Assembly as World Autism Awareness Day, it aims to raise awareness and increase knowledge of autism as well as impart education about the importance of early diagnosis, intervention and treatment of autism.

There will be a public show case in HDB Hub Mall @ Toa Payoh on 27 Mar from 5-7.30 pm, do come down to support this good cause.

Winner's Statement:-

December Holiday Bliss and Random Happiness

The last Purple Parade was the beginning of more great blissfulness to the long school holidays, but before we know we are just days away from putting 2014 behind and welcome another brand New Year 2015 with the opening of new school term.

This school holidays had been great to him, he had some play time with cousins from my sisters's children playing bowling and learning new turn taking game on UNO Stacko. He enjoys so much playing it that I bought him one to let him engage us at home during his play time.

I scheduled him to complete his homework in between play, silent reading, shopping for grocery and his stationary items for his new school term.

During one of his revision, I was marveled at his special thinking when I mark one of his work book question, it left me with mix feeling of tears and laughter.

His first 2 weeks of December was engaged with 2 enrichment program namely Magical Beach Dance Camp and Speech and Drama. The first program allowed him to build up his stamina, train his eye body co-ordination and follow leader on the dance steps taught, we also had a chance to see what he learned through a dance performance and learn simple dance steps to dance with him after the last day program, we were glad he enjoyed himself. The second program taught him value & joy of sharing, what it means to share and how one feels to be able to share with others be it things or food. and that no one has become poor from giving.

During weekend, I will try to arrange time and encourage him to go for exercise on his trikke while I jog along. he is getting better to his movement with more practice.

We brought him for an outing at Garden By The Bay, his second time since last visit in 2012, we took more pictures this time with him as he posed at will and freely.

We also visited the Alive Museum to let him experience and explore his imagination.

On the social front, he is blessed to have make several new friends and rejoiced with them in simple party or celebration of Birthday and Christmas during his weekly play dates.

During the holiday, he had also learn to make Agar agar as part of his Discovery homework assignment.

Christmas day was another great moment to practice our spirit of gratitude and bonding among family members.  It started with simple home cook lunch with my sister's family, thanks to my mum.  He enjoyed playing WII game Super Smash Bros with his cousin, we had log cake for tea break and steamboat for dinner. We had gift exchanged right after group photo taking.

We headed to Sentosa for our first ever family staycation during Boxing Day, he was reluctant to go at first but we managed to convince him to step out of his comfort zone to go with us. Once there, he was delighted with the hotel, elevator, room layout and its comfort from bed to toilet to its wireless connection. He now knows what it means to stay in hotel and readily rejected my offer to send him  home to sleep when I teased him jokingly that night after our dinner. We visited the USS during the afternoon, his first since its opening years back. The rain did not dampen our spirit as we managed to took some pictures, he had a ride at the merry-go-round and enjoyed dancing in the rain. He had his first great experience bathing in the hotel bath tub. We had breakfast buffet in the next morning, packed our stuff and spent some more time together in the room before checked out at noon.

These year end holidays had been a blessing for him and the family, profitted from several new experience, no wonder when mum asked him to make few different emotional expression after the staycation, we cannot see any negative side effect, guess he is still in state Flow and seems so happy at the moment.  He will be looking forward to his first day of school reporting as we awaits for more challenges unfold to grow and progress his journey further in the NEW Year 2015 partnership with his special educators.

Winner's Statement

Journey Recall & Moving Forward

6 years ago, when I first started with him in this leaning journey, it was more of teacher focus and less parent conscious, counting on the teachers to improve my little angel, not having the knowledge and experience to deal with it.  6 year now today, I am feeling normal and naturally enjoying the best of both his world and our world.  Connected to many people and know more people who have inspired me along the way by their unique stories. I have come to realize Love embodies not in how much one tried, sacrificed or suffer but in excepting the child for who he is inspite of his unique profile.

As I recall my early EIP journey with him, they can be best summarized into the 5 blocks from my own experience. The workshops I attended in the first year of EIP helped me a lot into teach, manage, prevent cycle, understand the child better and tweak to his level of understanding to maximize his learning from functional communication to work habit to self regulation. The partnership with the special educators was crucial especially towards last stretch of his EIP journey/ He progressed inch stone from own agenda to requestor and gradually could string more words together verbally to form sentence as he elevate into early communicator before he transit out from EIP to his next lap of learning journey. Work habits, choice making and learning to transit from one focus area to another are some strength he developed that benefit him greatly in his next learning transition.

It was not smooth going especially when social, communication and task demand went up. More discretionary effort were expended through social rules and stories to manage via 1-1 teaching.

Through out the journey, I had learned from teachers and my little Star to developed positive resilience very essential to carry us to the many races ahead. 3 Ps in Patience, Persistence and Perseverence were more useful in the first year. As more challenges unfold, 3Es were added for Energy, Enthusiasm and Empathy to reduce effort to manage positive outcome. 3Cs were then recruited to provide Courage and Consideration in decision making on what best suitable for his next learning phrase and to have a compassionate heart in discharging our best effort and except whatever that comes along without giving up. In the midst, I supplement it with rituals like hugging him or hi-5 whenever I return from work, Always doing our best having the "so what if" mindset focusing more on the effort in the process over results and end with a winner statement in every sharing. Happiness is then appreciating and liking what we have and not what we do not have, constantly adjusting goals according to him and calibrating our expectation from him. I have also learned to acknowledge his challenges more readily and praise for his effort to encourage and motivate him going forward.  With the right teaching and support, he CAN learn better and more.

Day to day discretionary effort to bridge daily gaps is continuous work in progress as we learn with him and teachers to maximize his potential.

With all hard work come celebration, We celebrate and rejoice with him from every little success whether achieving his IEP goals, or improvement made over previous or even exploring an opportunity to improve in the future. I wanted to honour and thank the teachers who had crossed path with him and family believing in him and supporting his progress in our hardest fight.

My little Star has progressed into my little Hero and we are happy for him to have come this far, he has recently also put on spec in another baby step of growing up,

The journey in 2014 has been fulfilling and purposeful for him and family as we see him developed further into partner communicator with lots more potential awaiting in the coming days.  I had signed up 2 holiday programs in Dec for him to seek opportunity to engage and learn to have fun aside of academic subjects.

The ley highlight of November was The Purple Parade

Glad to see the annual event was successfully completed and looking forward to more great happerning as the movement lives on!

Winners Statement: