2025

It’s 2025! New year, new goals. It’s funny how you spend your entire career working with KPIs and you slowly realise how that can apply to your personal life, to help you stay focused, track performance and adjust accordingly to meet your goals. 

When I first started therapy, I found myself at a loss when they ask me what I want to achieve for Ren in the classes I enrol him to. I never was sure what to say, put simply, I wanted him to fit in? But fit in to what? What is considered fitting in? How does that help him and is that a reasonable end goal? 

Slowly, I got the hang of creating goals which I felt helped so much in giving me more direction and focus. For example, in end 2022 I was enrolled in 0 classes, I wasn’t sure what the structure was, so I signed up first for PPIC early intervention class and let them guide me and teach him from 2023 onwards. Towards end of 2023, I became very concerned that he showed little to no improvement in behaviour, such as transitioning, taking instructions, even his speech was still very minimal. This is even though academic wise he was doing well. I went back to my Paediatrician and I decided to put him into Behavioural and Speech therapy as well. 

I make it sound easy that we just enrolled. But working parents, you would understand that even making. A doctor’s appointment requires coordination, taking leave at work, and also thinking long term how we will sustain the logistics in sending him to TWO extra classes. In addition, I enrolled myself into the Hanen course which was the best thing I felt I could have done. All these takes time, and it’s close to impossible to carry it out if you didn’t have help or time off. I decided to do part time work in order to make time for logistics, something my husband and I took time to decide to do as well. 

That said, it was one of the best decisions. These extra classes helped him in many ways. His speech showed significant improvement, his transitioning and being able to reason with him was now more doable than before. I started these classes with the goal of allowing him to communicate his needs via speech, move from my activity to another without a full on meltdown and at least able to listen to some instructions. It wasn’t smooth and every thing required iterations, an intentional change and way we do things, expose him to different scenarios..etc 

A lot of things which I felt were just impossible back then, all seems so doable now. All the anxiety I had before has been alleviated a little more, albeit still there but much better. I know feel like I can achieve more if I am conscious about the steps and end goal. 

This year, we are focusing more on social aspects, communication with his peers, putting him in different classes, learn to take instructions, be independent, be aware of social norms. To all mums out there who feel everything is impossible, know that every small step is a win and everything takes time. It’s been nearly 3 years and we are still in the journey of making improvements everyday. 

Sending lots of love to all parent caregivers out there!