Will to learn

When my son saw me leafing through a newly bought workbook, he sat beside me on the bed and looked at the picture of the pig on a number recognition and counting activity.

He said, "a pencil."  What he meant

Egg

Before dinner on Sunday, I kept my son busy with drawing and spelling activities.  He was able to independently sketch and label apple, cat, (lady)bug, (sail)boat, mouse, house, and ball.  The next instruction was, "draw a face." He scribbled a circle before pausing to think of what to draw next.  I was waiting for him to add eyes, nose, mouth, ear, neck, eye brows, and hair when

Drawing a cat

When I started homeschooling my son in December last year, I had the impression that he didn't know how to draw anything all by himself.  I had not seen him draw anything independently, although I noticed that he loved connecting dots and tracing dotted lines. He appeared to abhor coloring, and I devoted extra time to train him to tolerate, if not like,  coloring pictures.

In January I discovered that he already knows how to draw the parts of a human face -- eyes, nose, mouth -- inside an oval representing the

Really, what's love got to do with it?

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"He responds well because he knows you love him."


My son's former teacher reached this conclusion when she observed that all the while that we were talking along the sidewalk, my son was sitting quietly behind me in our bike.  It was the first time that she saw my son in more than four months.  Before I came to Thailand, my wife could not talk to anyone she met on the street for more than a few seconds if my son was with him.  He would wail and wriggle until his mom began to pedal again.  Now, due to the intervention that I have been implementing since December, he doesn't mind if I stop to say hello and have a chat with friends we see on the streets.  He patiently waits, and if ever he gets bored, he tells me that he

Today's surprise: He can spell "apple!"

Life is full of surprises.


One of the things that I learned through the years of coping with my son's autism is to constantly lower my expectations.  It breaks my heart each time I have to accept the sad reality that my son have limitations and that he may have a hard time overcoming his shortcomings.  I taught myself not to expect too much from my son, to be patient with the pace of his development, and to appreciate the