Journey to Obsession

Present :  Well so much for limitation of printing, only the other blog I mentioned that Mitheran maintained his limit to 4 copies on Saturday and Sunday.  when I came back home from work today, I got shocked to see most of the wall is covered with the Legend of the Guardians pictures.  His class teacher also printed 2 A3 size poster for  him and that also he sticked on the wall and that's the end of a box of blue tack.  He is so obsessed with this cartoon, it better be good.  its being screened here on the 30th September 2010, so you can guess who would go for the first show.  He also wanted me to cancel the parental block for timing on his computer, I got him a second hand laptop from my nephew.  Last month he used all 6gig of Internet service within 20 days, so now i have to restrict the usage by hiding the modem.

Past:  I started to send Mitheran to Dr L preschool classes, which started from 2.30pm till 6.00pm, every day from Monday to Friday.  So, have to travel from Klang to Damansara everyday.  in the meantime, I tried to source a normal kindergarten to send him in the morning.  Finally i found one in Petaling Jaya, where they do take in a limited number of students with special requirement.  The principal of that school happens to be my friend, so I enrolled him.  happily i sent him in the morning for 2 hours of pure freedom, For myself of course. within one week, I was asked to collect my refund of fees and Mitheran from the school.  Apparently, he managed to escape from his class and was found on the roof of the multi purpose building.  The building was 2 storey high, they can't figure out how he managed to climb on the roof for the 2nd time.  Fearing for his safety, he was removed from the school.

The Journey of happiness

Present :  The last few days has been good, first i recevied a call from Mitheran's transport lady commenting on his good behavior.  Mitheran has problem about personal space, he doesn't move away if someone approaching, he just bangs on them.  So, the transport lady, kind of complained, that Mitheran bangs on her every time he gets down.  Last Saturday we went shopping, normally i would go alone for groceries shopping.  this time i took mitheran with me because my daughter wanted to go state library with her friends.  We actually had a good time, he was calm and choose most of the groceries.  he picked the apples he wanted and bagged them, never moved far away from me.  After that he towed the shopping trolley all the way back home, its quite a walk from our apartment to Coles.  I needed a printer for my school work, so decided to get one and I know Mitheran would love to have one too.  He loves printing his favourite characters and now he is on to the Legend Of the Guardians.  The moment I fixed it, he started printing and I have to give him limitations up to 4 copies only, to my surprise he maintained it.  I helped him to stick it on the wall, it actually looks nice. 

Past :  When Mitheran was from 3 after he was diagnosed, I started to take him to public places every weekend.  Mostly to crowded shopping areas and playground.  I even tried taking him to movies, which he would only last for about 15 minutes or until the food runs out.  After that he will start becoming hyper again, rolling on the floor, jumping on the chair or even trying to jump behind the chair.  after that I have to remove him from the scene.  Normally I would take my helper with me and would choose the mall that has a playground.  All four of us, myself, mitheran, my daughter and my helper, would go to theatre when there is a nice cartoon playing.  I never gave up, every cartoon we would be there and when he starts his act, I would remove him and bring him to the playground, where my helper would keep an eye on him so that my daughter still gets to enjoy the movie without disturbance. Finally the breakthrough came where he actually sat an watched a movie at the age of 6 for Finding Nemo.  I actually cried on that day, tears of joy.

Journey from a break

Present:  I haven't posted for the last few days, the usual, busy, emotional breaks.  We did go to the library on Saturday, Mitheran took most of the books out, as usual.  finally he borrowed about 6 books and 2 DVD, all about mammals, birds.  once back he wanted to wrap all the books and DVDs in a present paper, leftovers from his birthday.  he said he wanted to open them on Monday, 13th Sept and celebrate his birthday again.   he has this accurate thing for date and day, i don't know how this works but he knows the date and day.  he also cant see any calendar that is not up to date.  He did open all the library books and DVD wrapped in the presents on Monday.  he is spending a lot of time on computers, just worrying me, sometimes i blame myself.  maybe i didn't do enough, give my time more with him, do more reading or practice on his writing.  his favourite cartoon of the years is coming, Legend of the guardians, he has been on this since he saw the advertisement last February in the movies.  he even tore the daily calendar which now shows 24th September 2010.  Monday he brought newspaper from school, which had advertisement on this cartoon, a competition for free ticket.  he cut out the picture not the coupon.  he has like 4 same advertisement coupon. 

Past:  After sourcing and seeing a lot of specialist, finally found one that was so positive and she has been doing this for the last umpteen years.  She runs a special kindergarten and place our kids in a private public school.  this was a good deal, i can rest assure that he will go to school with other 'normal' kids but with support teachers guiding him.  of course it is not cheap, i paid his fees which he would have used for a degree and a masters and this was only for his kindergarten and primary.  he was wearing drypers until he was 4, Dr L, she was the child psychologist who we trusted on this journey, had him potty trained.  he is a sweet, loving child and loved to be hugged.  he would play a cartoon of his choice over and over and over and over again,sometimes the same scene.  he loves music and dance (when he has that size and lost it now), the video posted was a sample of his impeccable dance in tune with music. well it cant be uploaded, no idea why will check on it.

Journey Continues

Present:  We came to Australia so that Mitheran can have better education compared to Malaysia.  He is enjoying and hopefully he is learning something new everyday.  As for me, this also a begining of a new life, a life which is meaningful.  I wake up everyday happy, enjoying the weather, the trees, the sound of the birds, the flowers and the people here.  Mitheran choose to stay here forever, those were his exact words when we came down for a holiday.  Every other day I would ask him if he is happy here and would he like to go back to his old school but he would choose his current school.  Now he says he wants to go holiday in Malaysia to his dad's house.  He already planned for tomorow, he wants to go to Library.   One of these days the librarian is going to chase us out because Mitheran would take all the books about sea mammals, birds, seals, penguins from the shelf to the table.  There would be a big pile of books on the table.

Past:  Our Journey started with behaviour therapist, speech therapist because at this stage Mitheran still doesn't utter a word.  Somehow I just knew what he wanted and when he wanted it, maybe that's why his speech was so delayed.  He only called me "Ma" when he was 9 years old.  During the process of finding someone to help, I did come across some so called specialist who just wanted to make money out of our despration.  I went to whatever course that came, ABA, TEACCH and even met some specialist from overseas who said that they can help.  All they did was to obeserve Mitheran for 30 minutes and said that he has Autism, which I already knew.  Finally I enroled myself to a Diploma in Early Childhood, specializing in the Montessori Method.

Journey to frustration

Present :  Today Mitheran grabbed his assistant teacher and was taken off his favourite subject, Computer.  His teacher and I agreed on not giving him Computer time if he misbehave.  Mitheran has a habit of lashing out when he is very upset.  Lashing means pushing, or grabbing someone hard.  Earlier he also used to bite his wrist, which has a dark circle bite mark and now its fading.  Due to the frustration of not given computer, he cut his hair, more like gave himself a short fringe.  Even at home, he was crying and not himself today, one of those days.  Sometimes I wonder what is going on in his head, what is he thinking.  Mitheran can speak perfect English but the problem is he doesn't want to and has difficulties finding the words, as though its there in the head but not coming out.  Sometimes he will pause to search for the words.  He has difficulty expressing himself with words and due to that he expresses physically, lashing out.

Past:  In his early days, he was responding very well, I will post the video clip when he was 1 year old, need to edit a bit first.  When he is almost 2, he started to isolate himself, his favourite place in my kitchen drawer.  He will open the last drawer, empty it and sit inside.  whenever there was an advertisement on the TV with music of his choice, he will grace us with his appearance.  Even when we call him, he wont respond.  This got me worried and another visit to his pediatrician, resulted in a hearing test.  He was given a dose of sleeping liquid but he didn't sleep, so I rescheduled another appointment and when i drove out of the hospital he dozed.  I made a quick U turn and managed to do the test and his hearing is perfectly fine.  After that, the appointment with the child psychologist and she confirmed that Mitheran has shown some symptoms of Autism but because of his age its very difficult to confirm anything.  From here our journey started.....

The journey

Present:  Mitheran loves computer and he could google all day.  He mainly googles for clips from you tube or any other sites which features his favourite video clip.  He downloads these clips via Realplayer which he downloaded himself.  He will observe when I use the computer either to repair software of download and he will do it.  He have an excellent photographic memory, that was his speech pathologist said and it's very true.

Past:   Mitheran hardly cries for anything, even when he is hungry.  Within the first month, he was sleeping througout the night.  I was so happy because my daughter on the other hand didn't sleep at night for a whole year.  She would wake up at night and would play or cry but she didn't have colic or other sickness.  When she turned one and shortly Mitheran was born, she started to sleep at night.  When Mitheran started one, he started to go to zombieland, waking up at the middle of the night and playing.  He would eventually sleep at after 6am.  This pattern continued till he was 6 years old, then he would be awake during full moon and no moon periods.

The journey begins

Present :  Today was a very hectic and tiring day, I didn't see mitheran the whole day.  Mitheran loves to eat, chicken, fish and prawns but it has to be cooked the way he likes it, delicious, spicy and preferbly fried.  His other favourite food is the the big M.  If he could, he would have McDonald's Nuggets and fries for breakfast, lunch, dinner and supper.  He hates vegetables, a few weeks ago, I forced him to eat veges, just ended vomiting the whole meal.  He would swallow the veges instead of chewing them, as though its a terrible food.  The other day I cooked mutton curry and gave him for lunch.  He told me that he don't eat animals.  His version, other than chicken, fish and prawns, the rest of the meat are animals and he doesn't eat.  Mitheran has passion for animals especially, mammals and birds.  He knows every species of the birds including different types of penguins, pelicans, flamingos, dolphin, whales and every mammals.

Past:  When Mitheran was 3 weeks old, there was something different with his breathing. maybe mother's instinct, i don't know.  All I knew is, something is wrong.  A visit to the pediatrician confirmed that he was having bronchitis pneumonia and had to be admitted for 10 days.  During this period antibiotics was administered via blood veins.  It was torture for me to see his tiny little hands being pricked with needles.  He recovered but that's the beginning of all the sickness to come and visits to the hospital.