Impromptu Play Together

This morning, I brought J to the playground where there were no little children. It is very stressful for me especially when there are other children and babies around because J loves babies so much that he could unintentionally display his intense energy.

No kids at 10 am in the morning

However, at about 11 am, I saw 2 of my neighbours. Their children have returned from their school. My heart started to panic because I do not how J might respond to them even though he knows who they are and have played with them before when they were younger. When I saw the children (there were 4 of them) running towards our direction, I started to cringe. But I guess my worries were unfounded.

J was happily playing catch with the children. Of course, I do notice that J might be out of the group once in a while, to go and knocked on one of the doors in the preschool nearby, while others continued in their play.

J even asked one friend, S, if he could hold her hands. I was amazed because it took us 1.5 years to teach him to ask this question. In the past, he would grab hold of another child's hand and pulled the child along and ran, whether the other child liked it or not. What he did today calls for a celebration!

There were times when I noticed that even though J wanted to be out of the group sometimes, he would turned back and looked at his friends (Giving Joint Attention) and then joined in the group again. This is another great achievement.

I do also noticed that J looked at his friends, when laughing together. That was non-verbal communication, in which he has shown tremendous improvements too.

Overall, I am amazed that J has done very well in this small little social play and not to forget, this was an impromptu play together. I am overjoyed that he has improved very much. We have come a long, long way but when I saw how J handled himself with the other children, all these are worth it! Praise the Lord that he is improving every day.

J were playing together with his friends

Of course, after J and I went back home for his shower, I praised J for what he had done especially asking permission from another child if he could hold her hand, keeping his hands to himself and playing together with other friends. All these seems a natural thing for a neuro-typical child but for a child in the Autism Spectrum, in order to acquire these skills, it could take months and years of persistence, hope and belief.