Monkey Girl

Today is Saturday and report card day.
We met with Lauren's teachers. She did well in her languages (surprise, surprise). Her other core subjects are Science and Math. Science was ok @ 80 marks. Math 54. She left the last page totally blank. Kevin and I were surprised. We're not sure if she was bored or really didn't know how to do them. When Lauren saw her own test papers, she flipped through her mistakes and lingered on the questions where she got correct. Obviously, she is not happy with her mistakes. Well, she is a perfectionist.
Kevin and I decide that we will not be too hard on her for her poor Math results. But we will need to work on it more - to check on both her ability to do and focus on task.

Evening. We went swimming and then to the playground for a while after that. The good, good news...Lauren finally started doing the monkey bars all on her own (5 bars). She has been asking for help and struggling with the bilateral moves ie. left, right, left, right to move on the bars. Today, voila! she was a natural. She was so, so pleased with herself.

Good Friday!

Today started off a little strangely.
Lauren took a long while to get ready for school - very distracted with TV, her books and just took forever to bathe, and eat her breakfast.
Thank God Friday morning traffic was kind. We got to school with time to spare for reading.
She seemed a bit teary when saying goodbye to me. First it was "goodbye Rabbit" (By the way, we are given character names by Lauren, from shows she like. And the characters change, depending on her mood. Today, it's characters from Pooh Bear. So, I'm Rabbit, Daddy is Pooh, Lauren is Piglet and her little brother is Roo). Anyway, she said Goodbye Rabbit and I replied "Goodbye Piglet". Usually, that's it. Off she goes.
But today, she lingered a bit, looked a little teary and then....Goodbye Mom. Hmm...unusual. I half expected her to burst out crying...but she didn't. Before I could fully say, "Bye Lauren"...she dashed off, found her usual spot in her class line-up. Quickly sat down, unzipped her bag, took out her book (The Wild) and started reading. She was ok. Not sure if she stayed ok the rest of the day, but I'll know tomorrow. It's Report Card day!

In the afternoon, we went for Speech therapy. Her speech therapist, Cindy, did a few activities with her like show her a card with a pix and word/s, and Lauren has to think of a sentence which requires the word on the card as the answer (eg. the pix shows a shoe, the question would be: what do you wear on your feet?"). The first time Lauren did this was 2 1/2 weeks ago and she struggled. Today, was a total turnaround. She was fantastic!. She got her what and where mixed up but got the concepts right. Cindy was pretty amazed. Next activity, Cindy read 4 - 6 sentence long paragraphs and asked simple questions. Lauren could answer all of them (except for one where she got 2 out of 4 right). Again, this shows she's listening and understanding. Good for a typical child. Very good for an ASD.

It's days like these that give me lots of hope that Lauren can make it. She can have a shot at normal life. We just need to continue to work really hard now.

By the way, after reading The Wild, we now have new characters. Tonight, I became Benny the Squirrel, Dad is Nigel the Koala Bear, Lauren is Bridge the Giraffe (Lauren's fav animal) and Luke is Sammy the Lion.

Nite all.

Because it's Thursday

This morning, Lauren asked her dad: Who’s coming to fetch me from school?” It’s Thursday and normally her day with her Colleen koh-koh.
Dad said “Auntie Joyce" (her everyday school transport lady). Lauren said…Noooo, Colleen koh-koh.
And why..? Because it’s Thursday. This is the first time Lauren is showing that she is aware of the day of the week.
So, we reminded her that her auntie was in London visiting her son and would come back only much later in the month.
She was ok after that. (Phew).

Then at school, the morning bell rang just as we walked in. It had rained a little in the morning and so we were a little late. Lauren didn’t get her usual 5 min book reading time before the morning bell.
She was in tears when the bell went, looking for me.
Thank God, He prompted me to linger at school a little.
I reminded her why we were late: rain therefore traffic jam, therefore no time for reading. She was ok after that. But teary eye la.

Apparently she has had one crying episode each day since Monday.
Monday: cried in Moral class.
Tuesday: excursion to National Sc Centre: cried in the cave.
Wednesday: no news of crying.
And Thursday morning when the school bell rrrang.
Let’s see how Friday goes…

1st day after 1st term hols

Today is the first day of school for Lauren after 2 weeks of school holidays. She had just returned from SG on Saturday, after spending 2 weeks doing Samonas music therapy. Kevin and I are seeing some really nice improvements in her eg. more talking, more curious.
Yesterday (Sun), Lauren attended her first tennis lesson. She was a bit frustrated when she could not contact her racquet with the ball. But overall, had fun and was thrilled (little jumps and yelps of joy) when she managed to hit some across the net. Her coach scolded me for not giving her enough bouncing ball time. Looks like we need to work on that.

This morning, we expected the worst. Whining, maybe some tearing or worse, crying cos Lauren had to wake up super early, 6.15am to get ready for school. But she was splendid. She was happy throughout the morning. We got to school on time. She reminded me she would read her new book, "Pooh Bear's colour case" before school. And she did, with some classmates sitting around her. It was a good sight. I went to work happy myself.

First thing Lauren told me when I reached her day care after work, "Look mom. I have a chocolate from Andrea!", gleefully. Andrea is the 9 year old prefect who looks after Lauren's class. She's absolutely sweet. And Lauren had missed her the last week of school when Andrea left for San Francisco for early holidays. When her father got home at night, first thing she told him....Daddy! Andrea gave me a bar of chocolate!". And ya, of course she's eaten the chocolate. Right after dinner.

1st entry

I have never written a diary before. But I decided to “blog?” or rather pen my experiences as a mother to Lauren, my child with ASD in the hope of encouraging other parents in similar conditions.

Lauren is 7 years old and has a diagnosis of ASD, specifically high functioning autism when she was 4 years old. What does that mean to me, my husband Kevin and the family?

A lot of patience, trips to therapy and money flowing out.
But also a lot of joy in slowly discovering language and exploring Lauren’s curiosity.

We’re in Singapore now for her 2^nd round of intensive session of music therapy called Samonas. It has been very helpful in consolidating her other therapies ie. Speech/language, occupational and drama classes.