The teaching is going well

To my surprise and delight, my two young autistic students are doing well and showing noticeable progress.

Hao Wei (pron 'how way'), almost 5, has started speaking spontaneously, asking to drink water when he sees it. It's not a lot of speech, but a good step forward from when I first met him and he didn't say anything on his own except his own babble talk.

He has started the beginning stages of reading English, ie following the words and pointing to them in a book he knows and likes. He can insert a familiar word if I stop reading the sentence. ie That's not my (dinosaur). His articulation of English words (as opposed to Chinese) is quite immature and I was thinking that he could do with some speech therapy. But there are no speech therapists within two hours of Segamat, so I'm going to have to do my best to show him how to articulate the sounds of the english language. His speech reminds me of a child of about 2 years of age who is just learning to talk.

His attention span has increased to about 10 minutes for a table task (puzzle, drawing, a game with me) before he will 'lose it' and look for something else. Painting can hold his attention for a good 15 minutes. He is definitely more aware of his surroundings and the people in it - asking the other student to "sit down" and even touching them. He knows he is part of a group who is here to do things and that is a big step forward for an autistic child.

Best of all, yesterday for the first time, he made an attempt to sing our greeting song "hello everybody". He knows the tune, though the words are hard for him to say. Still, the intent to sing is there and now he can only go forwards.

My other student, Feng Ying, is younger and more autistic. She too makes babbling talking sounds but has less actual speech than Hao Wei. She is more aware of her surroundings, but her biggest step so far is in her bonding with me. If I leave the room, she notices and will follow. She is making more eye contact and is requesting toys and games with the words "wo yau" (I want). Last week, for the first time, she joined the request with the name of the thing she wants, ie wo yau apple. I want to build on this and get her to ask for a biscuit, water, marble and ball. Her tolerance of me holding her while she is doing a task has increased, as has her ability to sit and eat a biscuit, though she still needs physical and verbal prompting to do so. She fights me less on this now and is more content to sit and eat.

She loves it when I sing to her (she'd be the only one, because I'm tone deaf). Her face shows absolute joy when we sing together and I'm hoping to use this as a catalyst to develop her speech. I need to learn some simple chinese songs, which I'm sure my daughter can help me with. In the meantime, we'll stick with singing the English ones I know.

I'm so proud of my two little ones. They put up with a lot of my intrusions to get where they are, but it's worth it to see them enjoy the world that they've been hiding from in the past.

:)