Who says they can't help?

I've been seeing parents of children with special needs who have given up training their children. Hope has gone and they got tired because they are seeing no results. May this article serves as an encouragement to those family members who feel discourage.

We started to introduce Jane to some household chores that are appropriate for her. First, my husband taught her to prepare the beddings in the evening. And I taught her to wash the dishes. After several repetitions, Jane is now able to do the chores on her own. She can now also fold cleaned clothes, she even volunteers to do these things. She enjoys the chores and she can do them perfectly.

"So, my dear brothers and sisters, be strong and immovable. Always work enthusiastically for the Lord, for you know that nothing you do for the Lord is ever useless." I Corinthians 15:58

Jane Started Planning Our Family Vacation

Jane has learned to use laptop and internet. She learned searching using google.com. I saw her one time searching pictures about Hongkong Disneyland.

Jane is very busy putting Hongkong Disneyland pictures together using MS Paint

 

And using MS Paint, she placed the images together and come up with this one:

She was very vocal about going to Hongkong Disneyland this year. Since this vacation will require ample amount of money and preparations, I convinced her to visit Enchanted Kingdom first while saving for Hongkong Disneyland tour. Before she came out with HK pictures above, she did this first:

 

Angry Birds

Jane's newest MS Paint Drawing, Angry Birds.

Paint Painting

Jane learned to use laptop and desktop computer last year from school. Her favorite application is Paint. This is one of her Paint paintings, we entitled it "Jane's Ship".

Focus on More Important Things

My husband and I have attended two-day Parent's training program sponsored by CARD Phils at Philippine General Hospital last month. This seminar/workshop has though us several things and opened our minds on the techniques that can help us manage our daughter at home. We realized through this event that Jane has many things that should be learned aside from speech. She'll turn 10 years old soon, thus, she needs to learn to take a bath alone. Until now she has a fear of going into our bathroom. We don't know what triggers that fear, we are in the process of discovering its cause.

One thing she needs to learn is "waiting". Two weeks ago, we went to a salon for her hair cut. Jane was the 5th customer in line. She kept on crying because she wanted to sit on the chair and have a haircut right away. We told her she has to wait. But she kept on crying. The receptionist noticed us and asked what's wrong. My husband explained that Jane has Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), and her ability to wait is too short. Thus, the receptionist asked permission from the other guests to let Jane have a haircut first. Gladly they agreed. This is just one situation where Jane displayed her "impatience" but we cannot reason her ASD always and not all people could understand. That's why we realized that she needs to learn to "wait".

From the training, we were taught to take one step at a time. Jane is currently on home program, we have pulled her out of SPED school to give focus on the things that are more important to be learned than academics. Aside from the home program, we will get a speech therapist to help us formulate a program to address her speech delay.

Find The Product

Last Friday when I arrived at home, I checked my children's assignment notebook. There were several assignments and those made me thinked that the weekend will be very hectic because of the assignment loads Jane and Jarrel have.


Sunday was Jane's schedule to do her assignments. Her Math assignment made me a little nervous because I didn't know how will I explain multiplication problems to her. I thought I should ask her to memorize multiplication table first before asking her to answer her Math assignment. But when she saw her notebook, she immediately took it and began answering the problems. I was shocked! Wow! Jane knows the multiplication table already. She answered her assignment all by herself. I just watched while she was answering it. That was really amazing!

Fruity Loops Cake

I was very fascinated when my husband told me that Jane made this refrigerated cake. When Jane saw the graham crackers, fruity loops and raisins from the biscuit container and the condensed milk inside the ref, she immediately got an idea that she can make a delicious dessert out of these.