KIWI UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Huge Congratulations Kevin and Louise on your very special news!!!!

We are thrilled for you both and ask Our Lord to keep your

little Kiwi

safe and happy and healthy always!

All our love, we are elated!

Mark Samm Deqlan Logan

A Magnificent report

a reindeer made with Deqlans hand and foot prints!
Deqlan's Santa!
Deqlans Christmas stocking and angel

a beautiful pine cone decorated by our clever boy!

a gift from Nanna for the teachers at Little Leaps - she loves them and appreciates them just as much we do!

The most beautiful words filled the pages of Deqlans final report for his first school year, what a beautiful and precious gift

we all wept tears of joy reading how far Deqlan has come this year and the expectations he has met and far beyond!

Merry Christmas treats for Little Leaps!

We are once again on our knees in thanks and Praise to Our Lord for Deqlans magnificent report from Little Leaps.

I wanted to share a piece from his report with you

'Deqlan is a happy boy with a sweet and kind disposition. He has made astonishing achievements this year. He listens beautifully and he thrives on praise and positive reinforcement. He has a wide field of interests and particularly enjoys literacy , numeracy ,creative activities and learning about the weekly theme. Deqlan loves to be at school! he participates enthusiastically in daily activities and us always eager to learn new things. he is an absolute joy to have in my class and positively influences his peers. He also has an incredible memory and every week he will exceed expectations as he easily retains informations and skills previously learnt. His vocabulary is increasing daily and he can now have a three way conversation with an adult. He is more and more responsive to his name and instructions and has a better understanding of what is expected of him. He has also learnt to deal with his emotions and to verbally express his needs, feelings and wants. Deqlan is only four years old and has already exceeded so many expectations and milestones of that of a 'neurotypical child'. It is in his best interst to focus on skills that he has not yet fully developed such as social skills, fine and gross motor skills.

Deqlan is enormously loved by everyone at Little Leaps and we are so proud of his achievements. He is our little 'joker' with a cheerful personality . He continues to discover his own potential and we are extremely proud of him . I am blessed to have him in my class and i see only great things for him in the future "

MY HEART SWELLS WITH PRIDE

MY SOUL SINGS WITH JOY

MY KNEES STAND FIRM IN THANKS AND PRAISE

Thank You Lord for opening these doors for Deqlan to learn, thank you for leading us to Little Leaps, thank you for giving Deqlan the best teacher in the world!

Ayline, you already know how much we love and appreciate you, you are our blessing and i cant thank you enough for the love and dedication you give to Deqlan every single day - YOU HAVE MADE A MASSIVE DIFFERENCE IN DEQLANS FUTURE and for that I WILL BE ALWAYS BE ETERNALLY GREATFUL! God has given you a gift to work with kids that need someone to be a little more patient, a little more understanding, someone that loves every moment of every day, accepts each individuals differences and dedicates and puts her all into every thing she does with each learner! Ayline, you are our earth angel sent to help our beautiful boy reach his full potential and beyond!

Thank you to you and to Little Leaps for making Deqlans first school year unforgetable and magical and blessed in every way!

All our love and thanks

Mark Samm and Deqlan

P.S - NOW ITS TIME TO DO THE HOT DOG DANCE!

Yolandies baby shower

I went through to Vanderbijlpark on Saturday to attend Yolandies baby shower! Yolandie is angel Ruan's mommy and will be blessed with another little boy in Feb next year - i am so happy for you dear friend, that God continues to bless you and guide you and keep you the strong person you are

'breaking waters' game, what a laugh - you had to use only your knees to try and pop the balloons full of water!


nappy changing game - Yolandie got such a surprise to find a parcel of chocolate and nuts she had to change!

Ouma Marie , drinking out the potty! we where not allowed to say ' aw' or 'ooh' 'cute' etc - if anyone did they had to drink out the potty

Yolandie and Ouma Marie arriving

The tree of gifts - the photo doesnt do it justice! Yolandies family went out of their way to make this day unforgetable, it was stunning and done with so much love!

attention to every single detail!

Baby is due in Feb and will be named after Yolandie's Dad - Henry!

I wish you all the love and happiness in the world my dear friend - you are one amazing person and God trusts you to take care of another beautiful boy! We all love you and wish you many many years of blessings and love with your little one! I am sure Ruan has his hand in choosing this beautiful little boy especially for you!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY LOGGY BEAR

To Our Beautiful Logan

Happy Happy 9th Birthday Loggy Bear!

We hope you are having a stunning day and being spoilt rotten! We pray that the year ahead is awesome for you in every way and that all your dreams turn into realities!

Stay the beautiful person you are - full of love and laughter, kindness and caring. You have such a huge heart and there is nothing you wont do for Deqie and for your cousins Keaton and Khloe- they all adore you and they look up to you in so many ways, you are a wonderful example to them big girl.

You are so understanding and loving to Deqlan, at such a young age you understand so much, and show so much compassion to your little brother. Thank you Loggy for loving him and understanding the times when we have to put his needs first.

Always know how much we love you , and how very proud we are of you and all your acheivements! Have faith in yourself , you can do anything you put your mind to ! Always turn to Jesus Logan whenever you need to, He will always help and guide you!

You are growing up so quickly, i can hardly believe today you have turned 9!! it feels like only a few months ago, when you were saying ' KYK HIER SAMM' and would dance like a ballerina for me and Dad, leg in the air and all! Or when we needed you to walk down the aisle at our wedding with Megs, and you said ' Ek GAAN NIE LOOP NIE' and we found you in the bathroom taking your bridesmaids dress off!! Ha ha ha, so many beautiful , cute and precious memories.

Please dont grow up to fast young lady!!!

May God continue to bless you, protect you, guide you and love you always!

Have a Happy Happy Birthday Logs, we love you so very very much!

Dad, Samm and Deqlan

We cant wait to celebrate with you this weekend!

Bye George, He's got it!

"The rain in spain falls mainly in the plain, Bye George He's got it!"

In other words, Deqlans toilet training is going fantastic!

On Wednesday night, Mark decided it was his turn to try and take Deqlan to ' WEE WEE IN THE TOILET' and after shouts of delight, i galloped down the stairs to see the delight on my boys face as he was busy making his 'WEE WEE IN THE TOILET' we clapped and cheered and laughed and high fived and gave Deqlan his choice of Gingerbread men stickers ( A big favorite at the moment) to stick on his sticker chart. He gets one for each action of the process, and he is delighted to see it filling up so quickly now, its been on the wall for months, and now, we have some action on it.

Thursday night, Mama took deqlan for a WWITT, and voila, he did it again! Nanna was witness to this one and was delighted and gave Deqlan endless praise and cheers, which he absolutely loves.

Guess what, Friday, the same thing, Saturday the same thing throughout the day and evening before bed time, without any accidents!!!!!

I guess, something just made sense and he finally felt comfortable and at ease with the whole process and now its like he has been doing this forever!

Whats also very cool is that when he wakes up in the morning his nappy is dry , he will say

' NOW ITS TIME TO TOILET' and we immediately take him, showing him his words get a reaction, they not just words that he says.They have meaning!

I have read many articles and books and spoken to the team at Little Leaps and lots of other parents on this issue, which many of our kids on the autism spectrum find extremely difficult to master - techniques vary from giving rewards each time they "go" , to sticker charts, you name it - but Deqlan thrives on praise, he absolutely loves us cheering and making a fuss at his achievements , the louder we shout and clap , the better for our boy - its wonderful to see him so happy and at ease and motivated, WE ARE SO PROUD OF YOU DEQLAN ROSS!

Now, we shall continue as we have been doing and then move over to how to navigate making a number 2 in the toilet!

I know this may be alot more information then you bargained for in this post, but this is such a fantastic achievement, we cant help but celebrate and share it with Deqlans loyal prayer army!

P.S - ANOTHER COUNTDOWN I AM WATCHING VERY HAPPILY IS THE ARRIVAL OF MY AMAZING COUSIN KEJE, FRESH IN FROM MONACO VERY VERY SOON, CANT WAIT TO SEE YOU JETSETTER!

Have a wonderful weekend!

God Bless, all our love

Mark Samm Deqlan Logan

REJOICE IN THE LORD ALWAYS AND AGAIN I SAY REJOICE!

THANK YOU TO YOU FROM CHOC

Countdown!

The countdown to Christmas has begun - I love Christmas , its definitely the best time of the year, besides Deqlan's birthday!

Little Leaps have the kids learning all about Christmas these last two weeks of school and Deqlan is loving it! He learnt alot of new words and items this week - CHRISTMAS STOCKING , SANTA, TINSIL - although he can say Father Christmas, they have been saying Santa so its easier for the kids to say! He absolutely loves the tree, and decorations up at school and all the festive cheer of singing carols every morning in greetings. Ayline says he can hardly wait for this turn to come and match words and pictures and choose songs, all related to Christmas!

School breaks up next week Friday until ( i think) the 12th of Jan - Deqlan sure is going to miss Ayline and the rest of the Little Leaps crew - already trying to think of lots of ideas and activities to keep him busy!!!

The other countdown we are watching is that of the arrival of Kevin and Louise, from New Zealand! They arrive next week Saturday, and we are so excited to see them - they left South Africa a year and a half ago and this will be their first visit home!!! I know they are going to be blown away at the huge difference and progress Deqlan has made and to see how grown up Logan has become!!

Speaking of Logan, its her birthday on the 7th of this month and we look forward to a weekend full of celebrations next weekend when we get her again! Poor thing, knocked her head while playing with the ball outside on Monday afternoon and had to get stitches!!

We have also opened a new window the past few days on a topic called Hyperlexia. Description as follows:

Hyperlexic children are characterized by having average or above average IQs and word-reading ability well above what would be expected given their ages and IQs.[1] First named and scientifically described in 1967,[2] it can be viewed as a superability in which word recognition ability goes far above expected levels of skill.[3] Some hyperlexics, however, have trouble understanding speech.[3] Most or perhaps all children with hyperlexia lie on the autism spectrum.[3] Between 5-10% of autistic children have been estimated to be hyperlexic.[4]
Hyperlexic children are often fascinated by letters or numbers. They are extremely good at decoding language and thus often become very early readers. Some hyperlexic children learn to spell long words (such as elephant) before they are two years old and learn to read whole sentences before they turn three. An fMRI study of a single child showed that hyperlexia may be the neurological opposite of dyslexia.[5] Whereas dyslexic children usually have poor word decoding abilities but average or above average reading comprehension skills, hyperlexic children excel at word decoding but often have poor reading comprehension abilities.[6]

Hyperlexia is a syndrome observed in children who have the following characteristics:
- A precocious ability to read words, far above what would be expected at their chronological age or an intense fascination with letters or numbers. This is normally how hyperlexia is described. Precocious is quite a word defined as "early development or maturity".
- Difficilty in understanding verbal language
- Difficulty in socializing and interacting with other people
Hyperlexics may exhibit the following behaviour/characteristics:
- Learn expressive language in a peculiar way, memorize the sentence structure without understanding the real meaning (echolalia) and reverse pronouns.
- Conversation is rarely initiated
- A need to keep routines, which at times proves to be difficult to break them
- Auditory, olfactory and / or tactile sensitivity
- Self-stimulatory behavior
- unusual fears
- Normal development until 18-24 months, then regression
- strong visual memory (auditory as well)
- Difficulty answering "W" questions, such as "what," "where," "who," and "why"
- Think in concrete and literal terms, difficulty with abstract concepts
- Selective hearing
Hyperlexia is defined as follows
Hyperlexia has characteristics similar to autism, ADD, ADHD, language disorder, emotional disorder, hearing impairment, giftedness or, paradoxically, mental retardation.
It is important to "diagnose" hyperlexia and use its characteristics to server as tools for teaching. A Speech and language pathologist who is familiar with the conditon of hyperlexia is a crucial first step. Hearing, neurological, psychiatric, blood chemistry and genetic evaluations can be performed to rule out other disorders but are not needed to identify hyperlexia



I know its alot to take in, but it does sound an awful lot like our precious Deqlan - his love of letters and numbers and reading and writing has a name - its not just ' HIS THING' it actually has a name!!!! Its not all bad and some of the flags are very similar to that of Autism, except for the very early reading ability. There are some very very positive notes - alot of kids with Autism are not verbal, alot of kids with autism battle with reading, writing, spelling , numbers - so we are already so blessed Deqlan CAN DO THESE THINGS AND WELL!!! We now need to concentrate on the areas he needs help with, social interaction being a very very important one! We need to use his strengths to teach him the other things !!!


We are meeting with Little Leaps on Monday to discuss this , as this is going to change the way Deqlan is going to be taught! I have also been very fortunate to chat with another mommy his son has Aspergers and Hyperlexia and she has given me so many ideas to try with Deqlan.

We will of course formally need to get this assessed, so as to ensure we are providing Deqlan with the right tools to learn in the right way! As we learn and are guided, will share with you all to!

Thank you for your continued prayers for Deqaln to remain NED and for him to reach his full potential!

There are alot of kids in a very tough fight against neuroblastoma and other cancers at the moment, special prayers needed right now for JED, CONNOR, NICK, YLARIA, EVAN

Hope you all well, have a great weekend, God Bless and love
Mark Samm Deqlan Logan
REJOICE IN THE LORD ALWAYS AND AGAIN I SAY REJOICE