LOVE is Patience LOVE is Kind.

Not long after I posted my last blog in Mar, the inevitable happen, we received the news on the passing of our founding father, Mr Lee Kuan Yew.  Though he may not express the sense of grief like neuro typicals do but he soon came to know about him through school and media report during the week of nation mourning.

Get him to extend his respect during the Youtube live broadcast from home instead, to be grateful and resilience in living and improving life.

He had his school sport day on 1 April, I attended with his grandma, though the weather was burning hot but glad that he enjoyed his team relay race while I took part in the parent-teacher race. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvmppq_yLFA&feature=youtu.be

He had his first visit to the bird park in April, also take opportunity to expose him to science on Diversity:- Animal/Birds.

Mother's Day was another annual occasion to thank and honour mothers within our family, we had a family dinner and house visit to my sister place nearby the eating house.

Random moment of his ME time at home, a bliss to watch when he loves what he does.

Term 2 learning had seen many challenges unfold more on social and work habits for academic results as demands went up, a good problems and an opportunity for parents and teachers to intensify collaboration in problem solve them together for the children progress going forward. It is a cause for concern, as it is affecting how much he can learn, and we know that he is capable of much more! With good detective work from the form teacher, he is now able to have better control with praise and rewards system for good behavior. Teacher had committed to continue to use and monitor it moving forward to Term 3, Fabian & classmates now look forward to doing things right and some behaviors have also been mitigated too in continuous learning and improvement.

It is always calibration in progress as we journey on to learn and relearn with him.

His in-class work is usually not rushed and he is able to get the correct answers when he reads and gives careful thought to his answers. However, during the exam, he tends to rush through to finish his paper, and does not follow the work habits that is taught in class and displayed by his in-class work (e.g. reading and underlining keywords in the question). Checking his work is still an issue for him – he currently checks for completion (especially quickly during exam time), but is unable to check for the accuracy of his answers. I have learnt to let go to elevate his work habits and step up his mindfulness for answer accuracy with more practice to do work independently. To rebuild his test paper taking stamina, we start off with doing a few questions like 3-5 at a time where he is more successful, then later combine few question into few pages with short break in between. By doing so, we can see he is more successful in achieving his target for the right answers. His writing skill still has room for improvement, to be tidy and consistent.

During the June holidays, we had registered him for 3 school programs namely Trikke exercise, Stomping and percussion and lastly Street Dance. He enjoyed attending to them all and happy to return back to his school. To coincide with 28th Sea Games held in Singapore, we wore red to show we are RED to lend our support to the Team Singapore !

Another break through achieved in June holiday was to catch a movie at cinema for the first time with the family, a state of flow we have been looking forward for a long time.  With this success, we can then embark on other shows be it cinema or live show like Hi-5, Barney etc...

Some random blissfulness...........

Home economic:- He enjoys the Hey Chef , and will some times request to help up in cooking, we start off with simple dry noodle or fried noodle to go with his flow or interest.

Food review: Japanese food and chicken rice are his favourite on top of Western or Italian sphagetti 

Brought him to IKEA to explore science topic on material

Lately, he is close to Barney and friends waching it on youtube, I also brought him to watch the live show in City Square Mall and was also amazed at how his interest can elevate his interest in drawing which he normally hates.

More drawing...

Got this sharing when I attend his sister school parent communication night, truely we must not over protect our kid and even assure them of the support. At time, we have to learn to let them fall a bit and learn to help themselves. 

But this is also a dilemma for parent with SN kid, who we have been told with the right support and training, we can celebrate their abilities.  Whether the kid is SN or not is so crucial, because by accepting and acknowledging their traits, we can then apply the appropriate support and expend our worth while effort to grow and improve them.

He is excited to return school for Term 3, when I asked him who do you miss, he just say he misses all of his friend in his class.   Whether in actual school and space context, does he really means what he says remain to be validate, count on his teachers then in good faith.  Walk on son and ... !

  Winner's Statement:

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:-