Banana, Apple, Pear ...... Alex's new words.

It's difficult to know exactly how many words Alex could say. I know he understands more than we know but when it comes to speech, he can only say what he sees.

When I read him his books, he will point at certain things that catches his eyes and say the word. Because his pronunciations are not very clear, I had to listen very carefully to be sure what he is trying to tell me. He seem to enjoy sharing this new skill with me.

His fine motor skills are also improving. He can now turn the trains "on" and put them on the tracks correctly. He would have struggled in the past and gave up without trying.

He can also zip and unzip his coat with ease. Funny how I had to learn simple things like "hand over hand" method from Early Bird Programme to teach Alex how to zip his coat. It shows that sometimes, we tend to over complicate things and doubt what we can actually do naturally.

I had a conversation with a friend a week ago about "bullying in school". She has three beautiful neuro-typical children and like most protective mothers, she is worried about her children being bullied because they are different. Her children are mixed - Caucasian and Chinese. It didn't occur to me that being a mixed child, they too can be a victim of bullying. In order to prevent this from happening, she tried to educate their classmates by introducing them to Chinese culture. During Chinese New Year, she brought mandarin oranges and snacks to their class and had a short talk about the celebration.

I think it's a really good idea and it gave me an even better idea. I spoke to a number of parents with autistic children about schooling. They had their children transferred from mainstream school to Special Need school because of bullying. Although Special Need school is a safer environment for our children, it lacks the opportunity for them to flourish in "real" society. I know I won't be here forever to protect Alex and I would prefer Alex to learn to deal with the real world in mainstream education setting.

In order for Alex and other high functioning autistic children to attend mainstream education without fear of being bullied, I intend to approach our local education authority to organise talks for school children about Autism.

Autism is not a well known disorder amongst other disabilities like down syndrome, cerebral palsy, deafness, blindness etc. Because of the lack of information, children with learning disabilities are targeted by bullies and as a result suffer from low self-esteem, depression and perhaps regression.

When one talks about autism to adults, it is automatically associated with the movie "Rain Man". The movie is about 20 years old and I am sure many youngsters have not heard of this film. Autism is not something that we talk about as a general knowledge topic, or even a family discussion among family members. Hence it is important that we pass this information to children through talks in their school. This, I believe will help them to understand the challenges that special need children encounter each day of their lives.

Children learn what they are thought and I don't believe there is an ounce of evil in them. By providing knowledge, we could better the lives of our special need children attending mainstream school.