It's official!

My current mood:

Therapy has begun! Yay! What a relief to finally have started all of the recommended therapies. :) Since last writing, Joshua has completed his second series of 6 socialization classes. We get the official feedback on Tuesday. She has said that he has done well, but two out of the past three sessions he has been a little out of sorts when first getting there. One of those times was the parking garage incident. This week was because when we came out of the bathroom, Ms. G. was standing outside waiting for us. He fell to the floor when he saw her because we weren't expecting her to be there. (She is usually running a little behind schedule ;) ) He got over it quickly though once he went into the office and she showed him the schedule. It's amazing to me how colors can completely turn things around for him. :)

Yesterday was his first speech and OT appointments. I'll start with the speech, since that is what we did first. Ms. R is a really sweet, older lady. As I stated previously, she said he needs to work on 4-5 word sentences. He does this all of the time with no trouble, so I am still a little confused about this one. He makes sentences that are 7-10 words at times! Anyway, we go in and Josh sits at a table in front of a mirror. There was a shelf behind him, VERY visible in the mirror, and it was stacked with toys galore, all of which were new to him. Immediately he spotted a bus. It had a lot of those Little People characters in it, so she emptied it out and moved them into a pile next to her. She let him play with the bus while she rummaged for the book she chose to use with him. While doing that, she also asked me if he had started doing anything new since she saw him last. I don't know if she forgot it was just an eval that she did with him, or if she thought he actually had a therapy session, but I found it funny she would ask me that. LOL

The book she pulled out had Ernie and Bert doing different tasks such as writing, swimming, washing and drying dishes, throwing and catching a ball, etc. She would cover up one page, show him the other and ask what the character was doing on the page. About 40% of the time he wouldn't even look at the page and would say "I don't know", so she would take his hand and touch the page with it. He'd look at it and she'd ask him "What's he doing?" and he would simply reply "He is doing it". She would then say, "He is {enter the appropriate action}" and he'd say "Yes!" or he would repeat what she said. Almost every one of those actions he had to repeat were 3 word sentences. His reward for repeating or answering on his own using "He is..." was to choose which person or animal he wanted to put on the bus. He had to choose by saying "I want man". Not "I want the man", or "I want that one", or "I want the green one"..."I want man"...that's what she expected of him. To me, it seemed a bit babyish compared to what he does already.

I noticed my printout of the schedule for his ST has a different therapist listed after next week. I am going to check and see if that indeed is the case, and if so, I am going to ask Ms. K if we can possibly check into getting the therapist that the psych recommended. She said she KNOWS that woman is good, and I think if we are going to uproot him from someone he knows three sessions inot this, why not go to the one we KNOW will work wonders? :) We'll see how her schedule fits with ours.

Next was OT. Ms. Mindy was great! She let him explore the room a bit at first. He went straight to a corner where they have some wooden steps set up. She let him go up and down while she set up a fun obstacle course for him. He had to choose a puzzle piece off a table, crawl through a tunnel, go up a slide, climb up some steps, put the puzzle piece in the correct place, slide down a slide, lay on his tummy on a scooterboard and pull himself across the room using his arms and then start over. LOL He had a blast doing it!! Then when he finished the entire puzzle we went into a room to talk about what to do wiht him at home. I have to try a bunch of activities with him this week and report back what helped and then we will set up a sensory diet for him next time. :) I'm going to be trying a weighted blanket (after I figure out how to make a good one LOL), jumping on the couch cushions, beanbag chairs, pillows, lots of deep pressure activities, etc. My understanding is that anytime he seems to be getting out of control or he needs to really focus on something (like school) I'm to try some deep pressure activities and see if it makes a difference. I'm really glad we are starting this now because I am starting school next week. :) She also mentioned some sort of cushion that will help in school, and she said she'd give me more info on it next week.

Overall, I think the day went well. I am a little confused on the Speech still. I personally feel she is trying to get him to do things on a much lower level than he is at right now. Sure the eval may have shown differently, but after being in there for a half an hour,I feel she should have seen that he is beyond those activities and she should have tailored the games a bit more to his level. Of course, I'm not a speech therapist, so maybe there is some sort of underlying reason for her doing it this way. I think we'll get to talk a bit more next week and I can try to figure out what the heck is going on with that. As Ms. G. told me, I can always switch to the other therapist if I want to. ;)