Moving up - 18 Oct 09

In Math, he is moving up fast. Their present lesson is in rounding up numbers. He knows this but I think, he needs to review it. He is good in Math overall but the moment you inject word problems, he gets a little confused especially if it is wordy. Funny thing but true, the moment I do an intensive teaching on him on a particular lesson, he gets it in a wink. Hence, his autism teacher will tell me that he did pretty well. I just do not know how far the school goes to teach him in order for him to absorb the lesson. A good example is the mode, median and range that was initially taught to him last year. In mid-September 2009, the same lesson came up again so I made sure he understands what to do. Indeed, he was able to demonstrate proficiency. His autism teacher told me later that he did not make a mistake at all.

In Reading/Language Arts, he still needs help here. I just hope the autism teacher will focus more on this. He can read well especially when you do syllabication on long words. However, he really needs more comprehension. I believe he can comprehend but not as fast as we want him to spit it out in words. I do not know but the wonders of autism is the fact that words are flying out there in the air and could not grab it to say it orally. This makes me sometimes appreciate that I can talk and communicate anytime I want to as opposed to individuals like my child who sometimes are not able to put what he wants to say into words. In short, many times, he could not verbalize. I hope we can help him more. He needs it especially now that he is growing up.

Overall, he has really made great leaps from saying less than 50 words (or we were just imagining?....say, 20 words) until he was less than 5 1/2 years old. From 5 1/2 years old and onwards, he demonstrated that he can read, he can solve simple Math word problems, answer some specific questions and do multiplication faster than the mainstream kids. Still, the moment you inject the why and how, he gets lost. He needs help there badly. He is eating on his own using his utensils, he goes to the bathroom, he removes his clothing, he brings his backpack/lunch box, he walks on his own without running or not being aware that a car might hit him, he uses the computer especially the youtube.com website to see different videos/songs/dances that he fancies, he puts his glasses on and returns them back after use, he removes his socks/shoes, he sleeps on time (actually, we never really have problems with this; there are few times he wakes up at dawn), he wakes up properly because he has to go to school, he knows how to remove his dirt on his nose, he knows how to say, "it hurts" when he gets hurt, he know when to stop liking a movie or only have to watch them if he feels like it (before, he used to watch it over and over and over).