Monday, March 12, 2007

A little praise, a little complain and a long-winded diary

It's a public holiday today and a long weekend at that.

Aidan and myself kinda slept in while Wilkin went to the gym. By the time he was back, I was only starting to get breakfast. Aaahh..... such blissful life... sometimes.

We went to the park and stayed there for a while. I met another mum who was there with her 7-year-old son who has severe autism. We started chatting and I was telling her about Aidan's speech problem and how he was earlier suspected of having mild autism as he does lots of echolalia. Well, no point guessing I guess, we'll see how it goes when we go to the paed. end of this month.

He is happy playing by himself at 'school', as reported to me by carers and teachers. Doesn't talk much, but loves to learn actions with singing. He is 'shy' with others when asked simple questions, and will only hang on to me and give them his trademark big smile. At home, he talks and babbles non stop. He catches up with songs easily and now can actually sing quite a few. Short attention span, and poor eye contact. Perfect hearing but will only respond after calling out to him a few times. Recites 1-20 and A to Z without a hitch. But cannot seem to form his own words to communicate with us. Usually he'll pull our hands to what and where he wants, or just goes 'Errhh, erh, erh...' As for this, I've been trying to encourage him to tell me what he wants by telling him to repeat after me.

Can anyone enlighten me on this, or anyone else who may have the same problem? I really just hope it's a speech delay and nothing more. And oh yeah, stubbornness is A+!! Defiant too! Smacked his hand hard yesterday, even I felt the sting. He just gave me that non-committal look. Which sometimes makes my pressure shoot sky-high.

But today, he has been a real angel. Probably because he had a real good late night out with Dada to Ching's place for a BBQ. I missed out coz I had to work. Biasalah tu. And in the afternoon we slept like babies, well, I know I did, while Wilkin had the computer all to himself. I love having my baby beside me for naps. It feels so right just being like this, and before long he won't be having his arvo naps anymore. I'd better cherish this :) We'd sing songs and play silly bed games, he'll laugh so heartily it's a song to my ears.

Sigh... Aidan, how Mummy wish you're like this everyday.

Pss... he started calling me Mummy recently, not 'Ahmee' anymore.

He'll bring either Quackquack or Puppy into the toilet with him and will say 'Quackquack/Puppy wee wee' when he does his wee. And just the other day I had to pull him out from the mall into the car which he later said 'Aidan anggooee!' (angry) Tsk, tsk... that's a good start, right?

Today Wilkin caught a big spider and put it in a box for Aidan. He started singing 'Itsy Bitsy Spider'... well, I know it's Itsy Bitsy but to strangers' ears it might sound foreign :P

Sigh.... this little bubba of mine...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

hahah..ur boy n my boy sounds the same! He still has his own secret language, which he infuses in with normal words. (as if to complete the sentence).

Mine brings his Hot Wheels cars everywhere he goes. Go to bed, must hv 1 car. Go out kai-kai, must hv 2-3 cars. Go to wee, must hv 1 car waiting outside the loo, for him.

I think he's normal. I may be wrong, but autism will have symptoms of prolonged repetism(?) and staring at water/spinning objects, etc. I found school helped my kid. After 1 year..he improved by leaps and bounds.

So..don't worry la. Not too much now anyways!

Sweetpea said...

i hope we are rigbt. but autism comes in many forms, not for me to decide, but he does echoes a lot and has short attention span. fingers crossed :)