Another day, more therapy

What a day. Once again, one therapy session went well, and the other not so well. To be honest, I was surprised to see the one I expected to be a problem go smoothly.

We started with Speech today and met our brand new ST, Jessica. She is AWESOME! Joshua immediately took to her. When we got into the therapy room, he spotted a new toy - a train. Jessica let him build the tracks the way he wanted and then they played with it for a while. Eventually he grabbed a car and she grabbed a bus and she pretended to get the bus stuck on the track. He told her that the red car would help her bus and then he drove it over and told the bus he'd help. LOL They played like this for about 20 minutes.

During this time, she asked me about how long we had been coming to therapy and what we had been working on. I told her we haven't really worked on much other than offering choices and trying to get him to give us more than a one word answer when doing it. She said she read in the chart about them having worked on the WH questions (who, what, where, when, when, why, how). Here's the funny thing though - they have NEVER worked on this in therapy and I have NEVER been told to work on it at home! I then explained that we were told he needs to do 4-5 word sentences and yet he does 7-8 word sentences at home all of the time. I also told her that during the therapy sessions the past few weeks they had only really been working on 3 word sentences. She looked at me a little funny and changed the subject a bit, so I got the feeling that she thought I was trying to badmouth Roni.

A little later something came up that brought up the fact that I was homeschooling. She did the typical asking of whether or not Josh has any brothers or sisters. When I explained that he has an older brother and two younger sisters, she was fine with it...she said that a lot of times they see kids that are homeschooled and have never been a part of a playgroup or see other kids very often. I explained that we not only have the siblings but we have our first meeting this month with a special needs homeschooling group and we also have him take socialization classes across the hall. So, she was happy to hear this. (Wouldn't you have thought Roni would have put this in the chart?)

At the end of the session, Jessica told me that he is doing great with his sentences. Have I not said all along that he was being taught well below his ability and level? It was good getting the affirmation! I KNEW that I was not imagining any of this. She said again that his sentences were fine, he knows a lot, and you can tell he knows the answers - it is just trying to get him to verbalize it that is the issue - EXACTLY! So, I asked what we should work on this week and she said to work on the WH questions. Yay!!! FINALLY! A real assignment. :)

OT did not go as well today as it has in the past. Joshua gets so excited about going in there that it is hard for him to settle into doing what he needs to do. Today was especially bad.

He took off straight for the steps. Why he loves climbing them, I have no idea. Maybe it is because we only have 1 step to get into our house and so it isn't an everyday thing for him, I don't know. Point being that is ALL he wanted to do today. Mindy had him take off shoes AND socks today. He has trouble getting socks on and off, but he did pay attention to her teaching him today and was successful. Yay! After that, she let him try and get some of the energy out. He climbed into the ball pit on his own for the first time, and once he was done he climbed out on his own - also a first.

This is when things started getting a little crazy. He suddenly had something in his brain snap and he could not stop moving. The more Mindy pleaded with him to come and do the chosen activity, the more he resisted and did his own thing. She asked if we had been introduced to the weighted vest or not and I told her we used it last week and it seemed to help. She never brought it out, but instead brought out a cushion for him to sit on. She also had 4 activities for him. After about 3 minutes of trying to get him to come to her, she finally managed to get him to come. But boy, he did NOT want to do anything she wanted him to do.

We are going to now implement the sensory diet that was mentioned at the first session. I have read "The Out-of-Sync Child" now, so it will help me out a lot I am sure. My assignment this week is to write out a schedule and try to fit in vestibular and proprioceptive activities in particular times of the day. Then if we need to add more we can figure out where to stick them. We have been doing activities each day, just not at the same time every day. Maybe this will be all he needs.

I will say, he was so active today that she mentioned that if doing all of these different types of things do not seem to help, it may very well be asomething chemical going on in his brain and he may need medication. I seriously don't think that is it at all though. We have just started a new schedule two weeks ago and I think that he is having a little trouble adjusting to it for some reason. She said that could very well be all it is. I think once we get into a groove, things will settle down.

So, that's really all the excitement we had today. I sent Jacob's schoolwork over to my mom's for him to do while I was gone. He went to the neighbor's house and helped her pick pears off of her tree and then went back and completed his assignments. He was all too thrilled to find out I left handwriting for him. LOL He did eventually get it done though without too many complaints. :)