First playdate, going to art class... and some more FIRSTs

1. Aditya just had his first playdate with a neuro-typical peer (other than his own twin sister). Our neighbor's daughter, who by the way was very sweet to Aditya, came over to our house. The two played Chutes and Ladders and built a "ride" with legos. They played for almost 20 minutes, and won praises for playing together so nicely!
2. Aditya has begun going to an art class once a week. There are 5 other children in the class including his sister. He loves drawing anyway, and this is a class where he gets to draw. In his first class he got to draw "his thing". In the second class, the teacher asked him if he would like to draw what the class was going to draw, and he agreed and did what the whole class did! Sister was all praises for her brother who did not talk about anything except for "drawing", "crayons" and once saying "Excuse me!" (Sister usually hears him talk about "rides" all day.)

Some more great signs of progress:
1) We went to the restaurant this week after a long time. There was a small child crying and we thought Aditya would appreciate sitting far away from this source of "noise". That would mean we would have to sit in wooden chairs instead of a "booth". Aditya asked to go to the booth. When we reminded him we could not leave after going there, he said he still wanted to go. I celebrated him for being so amazingly flexible about the baby that was crying. He said in response: "I don't feel so noisy now". (Only 2 months ago, listening to a baby cry at a store he would say in a loud voice: what's all that noise? I hate noise.)

2) Played Monopoly with Dad for 50 minutes. Okay to go to jail and lose a turn. Paid and collected rent, and made choices such as paying $160 as one bill of $100 and three bills of $20. Also pretended to be the "banker" and handed over the property ownership certificates to the buyer.

3) Played "FUNGLISH" with the whole family for 45 minutes. In this game he had to pick adjectives from a set of cards to describe a word. For example, to describe "Kites", he chose "colorful", "flying" and "paper".

4) When sister threw a tantrum, he said: "I am just going to ignore her".

Gifts for Sister

One of Aditya's ism's these days has been making a so called "ride" for his sister. When we "wondered aloud" (being asked directly is still somewhat overwhelming for him) what that means, he said it is for her dolls to ride.

Of late, he says it is for Sister herself to ride, and other kids can ride it too with their parents. (We then play a game where the ride looks much more like a plane with 6 aisles and food served to the passengers automatically from above their heads!!)

One of the "rides" is in the picture here. Riding in this picture is our own family of four!

What's amazing for us is the level of interest he has shown in drawing a meaningful picture complete with a way to "charge" the ride-- using the power cord going to a power supply. (One of the volunteers talked to him about being "green" lately.) Aditya was proud to tell us that this ride is green as it uses electricity (not coal or gas).

Yes! CRICKET!

When we had our baby boy, the first images I conjured up were of me and him playing cricket in the backyard. (In India, we live, eat, breathe cricket!)

Then autism happened, so Aditya and I put those plans on the shelf for a while.

And then suddenly 6 years later (oh yeah, our twins just turned 6)...

"Can we play cricket?" came the first question as I entered Aditya's playroom on Sunday for my 1.5 hour play session.

"Of course!" I totally decided to believe what I heard and enthusiastically celebrated him.

We played for 15 minutes, and Aditya got me out a couple of times! He also hit a few boundaries (4 runs) and one six!

Then he asked, "Is playing cricket good for me? Does it reduce the noise around me?" (He is very motivated now with the thought of playing everyday, and seems to have accepted the idea that playing interactive games is great for him.)

And so we continued.... with a game of Chutes and Ladders.

In this game, things so happened that he went on winning game after game, at which time we put up a score board, which was soon reading Aditya 5 and Dad 0. Finally Dad won a game, and Aditya cheered him:-)

Thereafter, he requested to play Candy-Land which we did for the last 15 minutes of our play time.

What a day! My 6 year old dream came true when I least expected it, and Aditya showed fantastic attention span as well as flexibility.

I have to say this. The last 1.5 months have been a roller coaster. For a couple weeks it seemed like he did not make any progress, and perhaps even lost some of the ground. But boy... what a come back he has made!

Well done Aditya!

By the way, Aditya has really grown fond of cricket and "Chutes and Ladders" now, and plays these games with his friends, including Mom and his twin sister, almost every day. And by the way, winning and losing is just equally fine! Even I didn't have this sporting spirit when I was 6!