When our son Leong Leong was studying in K1, the kindergarten teacher noticed that he failed to express himself fittingly in certain behaviours in class. For example, he tended to act repetitively, he was somewhat unsociable and was stubborn and persistent in his behaviours. He also seldom exchanged greetings with others.

In physical exercise, he was not so good at balancing and his leaping ability was not up to standard. Furthermore, when he came home from school, he never wanted to mention his learning experience at school.

A private doctor diagnosed Leong Leong as suffering from Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). We as his parents naturally would be hard to accept the diagnostic result. We wondered why Leong Leong should be regarded as an ASD patient when he showed keen interest in numerical figures and had even won a silver medal in the kindergarten section of the Mathematical Olympiad.

Anyhow, we took the doctor’s advice and arranged for our son to receive training in various appropriate institutions so as to help improve his behaviours. Unfortunately, after receiving such training for half a year, his condition did not show any marked improvement.

By chance, we came across the website of the Positive Life Association Limited (PLA). Our attention was drawn to the view expressed by its educational psychologist Dr. Jane Nam on child growth: “There is no need to label children. Every child has unique abilities. Given professional training, their potentials and strengths will be unleashed.” That left a deep impression on us and hence we immediately enrolled our son in PLA’s “Integrated Training Course”.

After several sessions of training, Dr. Nam was certain that Leong Leong does not have ASD at all. Quite the contrary, he is a gifted child. As a K2 student, Leong Leong’s mathematical logic ability had already reached the level of primary two to three. His learning and perception ability was particularly strong, he had an excellent memory and very good musical sense (in one of the training sessions, all of a sudden he happily composed a short song named as “Cat and Fish”). Moreover, he expressed himself very well in both the Chinese and English languages.

We find that our son, having completed his three-month training, is now more eager to learn. When he comes home from school, he would take the initiative to seek from the bookshelves extra-curricular mathematical exercises. He is even happy to do four-digit additions and subtractions. For the entire K2 school year, Leong Leong was often intentionally late for school. But since K3 started in September this year 2023, he has changed considerably and does not want to be late for school any more. Instead, every morning, he would eagerly take his sister (a pre-nursery student) to school with him.

Leong Leong is now able to relate details of what has happened in school. We are most astonished to see him taking an interest in the people and the events taking place in the surroundings. His gross motor skills have shown development, and his self-care ability has improved as a result. He would now proactively offer help to his sister, and even knows more how to communicate and play with her.

We are extremely grateful to Dr. Nam for the professional training given to Leong Leong. It has not only raised his overall learning capacity but also confirmed that he is in fact a gifted child.

With compliments from the parents of Leong Leong