Climbing trees

I grew up in a neighborhood without any playground but with plenty of trees for children to climb.  There were many reasons for me and my playmates to climb trees, among them were to pluck ripe fruits  and shake the branches to dislodge June beetles, but most of the time we climbed them just for

Pretend play

I was sitting in front of the computer during a break from our study session when my son came and swaddled me with a comforter.  After failing to keep the comforter from sliding down my shoulder, he decided to fasten it around me with Snoopy clothespins.  These are the same clothespins he uses for pincer grasp exercises.

My son catches me taking pictures using the webcam.

He thinks more clothespin are necessary.

Was he thinking of the cocoon in "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" book?  Did he get inspiration from "The Emperor's New Groove," the movie he was watching when he turned his attention to me?  Who was he pretending to be, and what was my role?  I would really like to know, but his communication skills are very limited.  Perhaps someday, when he can already talk and I show him these pictures, he may be able to explain why he had me wrapped in a comforter.  When that time comes, I will tell him that the other reason why I took pictures of this moment was because this was the very first time I saw him play with the clothespins voluntarily.

A Gripping Activity

When I first saw the fish-shaped container filled with soy sauce in my bento box, I thought of two possibilities: (a) the soy sauce can be bought already packed in the tiny tubes or (b) the empty containers are available in the supermarket and those selling the bento boxes had to put soy sauce in each of them.  Even though I lived in Japan for three years, I never got to ask any of my Japanese friends for the right answer, but I found out that the empty soy-sauce containers are indeed being sold in 100-yen stores.  I am so glad that they are also available in Japanese products stores here in Thailand.

I bought some of these containers for use in activities that aim to strengthen my son's pincer grip.  He hated the other pincer grip activities I had him perform in the past, and although he was following the instructions, he was also whining the whole time:  A-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. Woe-hoe-hoe-hoe-hoe-hoe.  Woe-hope!  Peep-peeeeeeeeeep. Woe-hope!  Oh-nen-nen, how-wha-way.

To fill the containers, he needed to first squeezing them to force the air out. He had to dip the container in the colored water, and then release the pressure so the liquid can get in.

He had to try several times before succeeding in making the liquid enter the container, but he persevered.  I also observed that he had lots of difficulty manipulating the tiny lids, but he managed to open and close the containers.  He tends to get frustrated easily, so I am amazed that he finished this activity without the need for the usual prompting and encouragement from me.

Snapshot (1)

Bangkok, Thailand.  December 2011.

Crazy language

Sometimes my son prefers to watch a DVD in the MacBook.  There are times when the player stops and displays a message that it is skipping some damaged area of the DVD.  This used to cause him to whine, which often progressed to a full blown tantrum.  He hated the interruption and he needed to express his frustration, but I suspected that his unacceptable behavior might also be his way of asking for help.  Although I learned

Counting and self restraint

In December last year I discovered that although my son could already recognize and write numbers, he did not know that they have meaning. He had no problem counting the frogs in an ipad app, for example, but he would touch the numbers randomly when asked to choose the correct answer. I had him accomplish worksheets where he had to count the items and circle the number that tells how many. Counting the objects was a breeze, but he would circle any

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

A language of his own

My son could already make some verbal requests when he was two years old.  He invented words, and by trial and error we learned what each word meant.  Balloon, for example, is "daw-daw."  When my son wanted to watch the videos of the animated TV series "Noddy," he would tell me "Apukutch."  For the films featuring a dog named Beethoven, he would say "Bow-bow."  "Garfield" is "Afee."  This system worked for some time until autism began to erase his limited language.  It came to a point where he would cry aloud each time he wanted to watch a video as I was making a futile attempt to guess what he desired.  Eventually, we just had to let him pick the disc of his choice and assist him in operating the player to

Miracles

I grew up thanking saints at the bidding of my mother who claimed that those saints cured me.  I was sickly when I was young, and although my mother brought me to medical doctors, she also made deals with these saints to heal me in exchange of a yearly pilgrimage to the church dedicated to them during their feast day.   She brought me in these churches throughout my childhood, but she never explained exactly whose saint was involved in which disease.  In my early teens, I would go all by myself to honor my mother's pact with these saints and to have fun as well.  A feast day, after all, is also a time of merriment.  Eventually, my mother would have to remind me of her panata (promise), and I would tell her that she should be the one fulfilling

Overture

My son's pediatrician in the Philippines was obviously choosing her words.  In June to September 2008 my son and I stayed in the Philippines and during that time we were seeing her original pediatrician regularly for his vaccines and whenever he has health issues. In this particular visit, she was inquiring about my son's tendency to cry aloud while waiting for our turn in her clinic's crowded reception area.  It had been a month since we came back from Thailand and she was wondering if his behavior was occurring only in her small clinic or elsewhere.  She asked if my son had acquired new friends in our neighborhood.  She also asked if he already learned to talk.  We discussed during our previous visit my son's delayed speech, and she recommended to use only Tagalog or English when communicating with him, in case the reason for the delay was due to the confusion from hearing different languages.  Although she was smiling

Lost in the Spectrum

A dot of light for me to see/ is like a million rays of light/ for all my life I'm in the dark.


These are the opening lines of a poem I wrote for my high school paper.  I already forgot the title, the rest of the poem, and what made me wrote those lines more than a decade ago.  Lately, I found myself reciting these lines in my mind because they aptly

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?

Please read the disclosure and disclaimer page before you proceed. 


"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

Talking in sentences

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When I learned that my son could already read common words from memory, I decided to train him to read sentences, hoping he would acquire language at a much faster rate.  I focused on the "I want . . ." sentences, to complement the single-word manding behavior that he had just acquired.  


Since last week, he has been consistently saying

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

Brownies for Mom

My wife is one of the lucky moms who receive Happy Mother's Day greetings twice a year -- one on the second Sunday of May, the Mother's Day in the Philippines and another in many other countries, and on August 12, Thailand's Mother's Day which is also Queen Sirikit's birthday.


For the first Mother's Day celebration of the year, my son and I gave her a cherry and walnut brownies adorned

Classroom in the bathroom

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In the middle of an activity, my son would run into the bathroom.  Giggling, he would wait for me to call him, or for me to go to the bathroom and to prompt him to return to our study area.  He would not cry when I lead him back to his chair.  He would laugh and drop on the floor because every part of his body would be so sensitive that he would be tickled by the slightest touch.  He would need several minutes to calm down.  It was December 2011 and we just started

Kissing the pain away

The blinking LED signs of the mall’s cinema just across the supermarket where we left my wife attracted my son.  He walked towards the foyer and stopped to watch the lights move from left to right to spell some acronym over and over again.  I stood behind him, constantly reminding him to stay quiet and to keep his hands close to himself.  It was time to teach him good manners while