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.