Fast and slow rides

Sarah with Imaan in the playroom.

Big and small bubbles

Sarah with Imaan in the playroom - building on his motivation.

Helena with Imaan in the Playroom

Joining and connecting.

Session with Helena

We were delighted when Sarah mentioned that a lady she knew was willing to volunteer with us. Of course we readily accepted and Helena came to visit us yesterday. Imaan takes quite a while to settle down with new people but we were pleasantly surprised that Imaan readily took to Helena. They were in the play room for around half and hour.

He also said her name "Helena! Helena!" quite clearly.

Helena has been volunteering with other Son-rise children as well and she is highly experience about the 3 E's (Energy, Excitement and Enthusiasm) and about joining (with Imaan's isms) as well.

We were also excited after learning that her MSc research looks at the Son-rise programmes carried about by various parents here in the UK. I am sure a lot of other parents and professionals are interested in her findings as well. Every time we see a professional (in autism), they will always point out that "there is no empirical proof" that the Son-Rise programme works ignoring the experiences of thousands of Son-Rise parents around the globe.

We wish Helena all the best in her research and hope to see her again soon.

If you are interested in volunteering, please visit our Volunteering page for more information.

A couple of minutes ago, we were rolling around with tears in our eyes laughing, listening to Imaan sing "Helena, Helena" to the tune of Jingle bells. Imaan can just be sooo funny!

Loving the playroom

Twinkly Imaan

It's amazing and I never believed that it would happen this soon but my son loves his Son-Rise play room. Every morning after he has his breakfast (and sometimes while he's having it), he will pull me into the playroom and ask me to lock the door and start playing.

Initially when we started out, he was hesitant to even go into the room and once in, he would ask to go out after a while. He would look for an excuse to get out - asking for milk, saying he wanted to "wee wee" or by throwing a tantrum. Over time, he has realised that this is a great room, a fun place where mummy and daddy lights up like a Christmas tree and the word "No!" is banned.

The improvement in eye contact is another amazing development. Sometimes he just looks at me unblinking and with such intensity as if he's trying to tell me telepathically what he wants. When he says something, he quickly looks away. I guess it's difficult for him to do these two things at the same time, something which is so natural for us.

Another change we have noticed recently is that he prefers to stay at home now and cries every time I tell him that we are going to the nursery. We found this quite strange because he loves going to the nursery and when I mention that "we have to go to school now", he would rush to get changed and wait downstairs impatiently near the door.

The nursery reported that he was still throwing stuff around and including some books as well today. We just thought that this was some bad behaviour problem and a way to get attention. However, he rarely does it at home and we now think that this is an "ism" or "stimming" to handle the sensory overload and overstimulation at the nursery. Plus all the excited attention he gets when people try to stop him does not help. The staff at the nursery have tried various strategies to deal with his throwing but I guess they have a reason to be worried as the stuff he throws can hit other children around him. We are really worried to think what would happen if he continues this when he starts school in September. We know where he is going to go to and right now we are waiting for his statement to come from the City Council.

Anyway, this is his last week at his nursery and a chapter in Imaan's life ends this Friday. We are looking forward to the next chapter with gusto.

The words come tumbling out

It's amazing how many words Imaan has picked up in the past few weeks and the wonderful part is that he been using these words meaningfully and not just randomly.

Just a few days back we were listening to some songs on my mobile via Last FM and he was actually trying his best to repeat the chorus of a song (I can't remember which) and very pleased with his effort. We both laughed a lot.

Last week, we invited Sarah to our house again. We discussed some issues and also set out some goals. In the playroom this time, Sarah built on Imaan's liking for bubbles by adding the words "small" and "big". So if he wanted small bubbles, he would have to say "I want small bubbles" or "give me small bubbles".

She then played with him using a small cart and got him to say "fast ride" or "slow ride" if he wanted to be pushed fast or slow respectively. After Sarah left, we have been playing the same game with him and trying to get him to say the same. He's nearly there.

What is the Son-Rise Program?

We get this question a lot.

Most of the professionals that are involved with our son seem to have heard about it but they only seem to have a vague idea about what it is all about. The only thing they know is that it involves intensive one-to-one interaction. However, the Son-Rise programme is much more than that.

The Son-Rise programme was developed by Barry Neil Kaufman and Samahria Lyte Kaufman after they helped their severely autistic son, Raun, to recover and lead a normal life.

It is a 1-1 therapeutic modality to help your child develop and grow in an environment where the cornerstone is love and acceptance and the primary focus is on socialisation. It is parent-directed where parents are seen as the child’s best resource unlike other therapies (such as ABA), relationship-based and child centred.

The programme is based on a volunteer network who works as a team to enable more time to be given to a child through the talents and personalities of the different volunteers. The programme is run in the Son-Rise playroom which is designed to be as distraction free as possible and act as a human greenhouse to nurture and grow your child.



The Son-Rise Development Model

The development model is based on the fact that there are 5 areas of development that need to be met for you to be a socially successful child/adult, and includes:

1. Self-Help: Toileting, feeding, dressing etc
2. Cognitive: Maths, reading, reasoning etc
3. Social: Eye contact, communication, Interactive Attention Span, Flexibility
4. Gross Motor: Limb mobility & co-ordination balance etc
5. Fine Motor: Hand/eye co-ordination, sensory perception etc.

Son-Rise believes that autism, at its core, is a neurological challenge where children have difficulty relating and connecting to those around them. For this reason, the Son-Rise program focuses on social development (no. 3 above) as without a child having these skills [or the 4 fundamentals (Eye contact, communication, Interactive Attention Span, Flexibility) as they call them] then their ability to learn the other development areas (i.e. no 1, 2, 4 & 5 above) will be seriously hampered. It therefore follows that once the child is successful in the 4 fundamentals they should then easily be able to develop in the other areas, but that the first focus should be social interaction.

Son-Rise has a social curriculum which bands your child from stage 1-5 reflective of how successful they are in the 4 Fundamentals. When a child reaches stage 5 of the social curriculum this would be equivalent of a neuro-typical child of the same age and the point when we would start to re-integrate Imaan into school, hopefully mainstream.

To go through the stages, goals are set for each of the fundamentals so that everyone working with Imaan is working towards the same goal. This is obviously the ultimate aim with Imaan.

Son-Rise Training

We have both attended the Start Up (January 2010) and New Frontiers (June 2010) courses. Both courses were 5 day programmes and equates to a total of 70 hours, intensive training by the Son-Rise teachers from the Autism Treatment Center of America (Home of Son-Rise) in Massachutes, USA.

Here are some AMAZING practical strategies that you can apply straight away with your child. These strategies can be applied to any kid regardless whether they have autism or not.

And here are some answers to some FAQs about son-rise.

The amazing story of Carly Fleischmann, a girl with Autism who can't speak but found another way to communicate via her computer.

Check out Carly's website.

Diagnosis is just the beginning

Sally Bercow, who's the mother of a "six-year-old son with high-functioning autism" writes that "Autism diagnosis is only the first step". She was commenting on the recent news that autism can be diagnosed with a brain scan.

I totally agree with her. The diagnosis was just the beginning in this journey with our son as well.

Imaan saying more words today!

While we were playing a horsey game involving Imaan riding me like a horse on my back, he said:

'Horsey up'
'Horsey down' and
'Horsey go'

Also:

Yummy, Baba, Cocoa pops, Ice cream, Yogurt, Milk, Blow, Bubble, Pizza, Wee-wee, Computer, Night-night, Bye bye, Pink bear, Help please, Apple, Out!  
and he counted from 1 to 13... :)


YOU ARE TRULY BRILLIANT IMAAN!

GO TEAM IMAAN! GO TEAM IMAAN!!! WOOHOOO!