Nov. 15, 2008 - Another evalutation this week
What a hetic week:
Monday we had Speech & OT (both are an hour each).
Tuesday we had an evaluation from a new speech therapist (2 hour) plus an hour drive on either side.
Wednesday we had speech (1 hour)
Thursday we had coop (5 hours from start to finish)
Friday we had an evaluation with our psychologist that has been working with my ds since he was 3 and then OT (1 hour). Whew!!!!!!!!!!!
Friday was different, all these years I have been able to go back and watch the evaluation. Now my son is old enough to go by himself, so I worked with the speech therapist planning our next 5 goals for him.
I have no idea how he did. We are suppose to have a meeting Dec 3 with other therapist to review what happened in the evaluation. Hopefully it's good news....
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Nov. 11, 2008 - Evaluation today
Today, we met with a woman who is a highly recommened speech therapist. And she works with the neurotherapy appoarch (which is what I have been searching for).
She worked with my ds for 2 hours and she was marvelous. I am looking forward to seeing his evaluation results in a couple of weeks.
The reason we went to her is because we have seemed to be stuck and not progressing. My ds can and does repeat any word but moving to conversation has been a stuggle. So hopefully adding her sessions with her experience we can push him over the finish line with him having conversations. Conversation and relationships are our ultimate goals.
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Nov. 10, 2008 - Seminar Review eReadingPro
On Sunday we went to a seminar about eReadingPro this was about teaching reading.
Here is their website http://www.ereadingpro.com/
I took away from our time that phonics is not the best way to teach children with special needs. The whole language approach is the better way with large flash cards and introduce only a few words a day (3 different times) throughout the day.
One very good point that I took away from this session what that the dolch list words should not be introduced first because, they have no meaning. Introduce words that you can put a picture with like mom, dad, ball, bat, etc.
I am not sure personally about the battle between whole language and phonics. What I know is that what ever a person chooses to do, I believe that consistance wins almost everytime.
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Nov. 4, 2008 - Breakfast Answer
This morning (like every morning) I get ds a choice for breakfast. But, this morning I said do you want oatmeal or cereal. And his reply was "bagel". Which is cool, because he made his own choice.
Usually he just repeats the last thing that you say.
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Oct. 31, 2008 - Halloween
We started going out for candy only when our oldest ds asked to. So we have probably been doing this for 4 years now, and this was our best year ever. Our ds with autism stayed right with us and he even posed for a picture. Now, we really don't go to that many houses (I don't want the junk food in the house forever) but the kids know no difference and we have lots of fun.
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Oct. 21, 2008 - The Dentist....
Our ds with autism has been to the dentist since he was 1 1/2 years old. He still doesn't like it. I think he wears the girls out in the back every time. But they never complain, he does however.
He is suppose to have two teeth extracted (yeah)
. Hopefully they will come out before the appointment.
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Oct. 20, 2008 - Field trip with coop
Today, we went to the local aquarium. The ST wrote ds with autism a social story about the class that we would be in and that babies cry, etc. My ds with autism is very gentle in spirit until a baby cries. This is the only thing that will set him off. Well, babies cry. But, he did not react and he repeated, "I am okay" which is from his social story. Also he made it through 14 minutes in the class before we had to leave, this is 13 minutes more than normal.
I am so very thankful for our therapist. They are wonderful. Here are some pictures from today:
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Oct. 17, 2008 - Hair cut day
Hair cut day is not fun at all. It stinks. So, today, I invited "the whole hee haw gang" to this hair cut appointment. My mother-in-law and her husband stopped by to help. He held on the ds with autism and it went better than before.
Ds with autism really hates the scissors, so we always have to use the guard and the guy who cuts his hair leaves it on the longest setting but this means that ds only get's one style of hair cut. And his hair is so thick and beautiful we could do so much more with it.
Who knows in 6 months when we go back, I may have an entry that talks about how cooperative he is....you never know
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Oct. 9, 2008 - Break through...
I am not quite sure what happened. But, ds with autism started answering questions again.
I did take him back to the beginning, matching, what doesn't belong. Lots of exercises where all he had to do was point or match. Then I would take the animals he loves and start with "What's this?" or "What sound?"
On Wednesday I got a good report both from ST and OT they said he was cooperating again...YEAH!
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Oct. 2, 2008 - Life bring you ups and downs....
Yesterday, we had speech therapy--our speech therapist whom we have gone to for 5/6 years said that he was not and has not made progress in the last 2 weeks and have we considered SSRI's.
I am so very frustrated, I don't know what to do. The ST swears it is not boredom on my son's part that it is that he is not making the connection that he should and he has stopped doing simple things that she knows he can do.
Now, he has started imitating any word. (which is new). Here is what I am thinking. About an hour & 1/2 way are board certified behavior analysts, I am going to call them today to see if they will do an assessment on my son, maybe they can shed some light on what is going on.
I am not against SSRI's, but I want to see if we can figure out the reason before we have our son injest a drug that will have side effects. And it also seems that with my dh family history that 8 1/2 is a big turn around for the men in this family and we are almost to that age. I am not discouraged, but I am close.
As I am typing this out I am thinking about what I am doing different. When we have ran out of probiotic's I did not replace them. The first thing I am going to do is order the probiotic, and then call the behavioral specialists.
I am interested if anyone has had an experience where your child has made steady progess and then kinda of quite-what did you do? How did you get through this?
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Sep. 28, 2008 - Seminar Review
Yesterday, I went to a seminar by Maria Bird-West Wheeler M.EdD. Her topic was "Autism Spectrum Disorders: Behavior & Teaching Solutions"
Over all it was good, she spoke from 9 to 4. There was a lot of material, sometimes it was a little much to sink in. But, there were really good stratges. I learned a few things that I would like to share.
What I brought away:
⇒ This is an ABA approach. Rememer
Antecedent ⇒Behavior⇒Consequence
Fact that I did not know (an antecedent can take place up to 48 hours before the behavior occurs).
She gave us some suggestions on how to look at what made that behavior appear. Her philosophy is that you have to understand what made the behavior appear before you can fix the behavior.
When she talked about over stimulation the thing that I learned was when a child with ASD looks "bored" they could be over stimulated. And she gave some examples of this. She showed a kid sitting with his legs crossed in the floor with his hand holding his head up doing nothing and this was an example of a child over stimulated. She also said that humming is a sign of over stimulation (I always thought it was boredom?) But, my child hum's a lot so I am going to check this out.
She talked about how important sleep, nutrition, and communication supports for every child was.
As far as sleep some suggestion was to have a bath or shower 1-2 hours before bed. (That doing this right before could get some children wired)
No TV after shower or bath
No caffenine, from chocolate, tea, soda, enegry drinks, etc after 3 pm
To lower the lights after the bath or shower
And to play music with no words. (Words are stimulating)
As far as nutrition
Eat every 2 hour (snacks with protien, anything from a glass of milk, yogart, peanut butter crackers, peanut butter apples, cheese, etc.) It doesn't have to be a meal, just a little bit of protien with keep them on task.
Carry a survival snack with you at all times, so if you are running around town longer than you thought you can hand the snack back to the child so he/she stays on schedule.
Provide a good communication support.
Here I got some good ideas for potty training. For example she had a big 8x10 picture of the pec card of the potty and it was place out side at the door at eye level for the child. Then the child would match his potty card with the one on the door and go to the bath room.
She talked about visual schedules and here was a good suggestion that I had not heard of. If you provide a grocery list or another list from a local department store, put some cards with questions marks on the PEC's card so if you want to buy something not on the list you can.
She also talked about how to modify homework or schoolwork so that it is not overwhelming. For example;
- more space between problems to be solved so that it is not overwhelming.
- give the child a choice have the problem worked out twice, one with the right answer and one with the wrong. Then have them circle the right one, and if able put an X on the wrong one.
She also talked about backward chaining where most of the work is done and they just finish it. And then after practice you do a little less and the child does more. Until the child is doing it all.
Overall it was a good seminar. Anytime that I can walk out learning something I did not know before I consider that an success.
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Sep. 26, 2008 - Sibiling, peer interaction, imatiation, etc
I know that having a son with severe autism that I cannot relax and when I see interaction, imtation, etc, I get excited with joy. My dh thinks that I "over do it" but I look for hope every day. I wanted to share this with you.
This was my hope answered this day:
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Sep. 24, 2008 - Yesterday's progress
Our speech therapiest is having trouble getting him to catorgize...which is something he can do really easily. So she suggested having him write catorgizes on the board. It worked really well for me, not so well for my college student that works with him twice and week and not at all for the Speech Therapiest today. So, I am going to go back in a couple of appointments and so the speech therapiest how I got him to do this.
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Sep. 24, 2008 - What do I do now
Anyone who knows autism knows that when the children make gains in one area the rest of the stuff kind of stops for a while until they get comfortable with their new skill.
Well, I don't know what new skill is emerging...but I do know that verbally labeling things have stopped and other things that he could and would do have also stopped.
Sometimes it so easy to get discouraged. But, I am going to try to remember that this is a good sign, and pray through this.
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Sep. 22, 2008 - Star Wars IV
My oldest ds wants to be Darth Vader for halloween and he had never seen the movie. So yesterday my DH promised the DC that they could watch the movie. In reality I guess we were their ages the first time we saw it.
But the funny part was when Leah, Luke, Han and the hairy guy was stuck in the trash compactor. My DS with Autism says "Help, I am stuck". I started laughing so hard. Here is a kid that up until this year would never watch TV or Videos or spend time on the computer. And now we are able to use them as rewards because he likes them.
So, here is what all the children agreed to. My oldest ds still wants to be Darth Vader because "he is cool" and my ds with autism is going to be Luke and our dd was given her costume so she will be Leah next year.
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Sep. 18, 2008 - Co op day
Co op day is always an event. I teach 2 classes. One which my ds with autism is in and then one that he is not in. We have been blessed with a wonderful college student who has been working with him twice a week since Jan. She comes while I am teaching the other class and works with him.
Today we worked on more words. I would say the word and he would write it. He also drew a face for me. Here is his words he did today.
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Sep. 17, 2008 - Our Spelling & Handwriting Work for the Day
I wondered if my ds could spell, so I have taken our workbook Spelling Workout A and asked him to write on a dry erase board. That seem to work better than building a word with Build a Word Phonics.
Here is our work book.
And here are the results (the last two words - Cow and horse, I added because I only had 18 words and wanted to get to 20.) Here is his work actually there are 21 words, because when I asked him to spell pin, he spelled pen. So I had to say pin as in stick pin and he got it right.
We still have building sentences and math left for today.
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Sep. 16, 2008 - The beginning Oct 14 2003
For us our journey started with my ds was 17/18 months. Our story really is no different than most. He developed normal up until then and then life went crazy.
He lost all sound. I don't mean just the words that he spoke, but all sound. He started destorying books, flapping his hands, and all fine motor activity stopped.
We started out with a Developmental and Genetic Specialist, who did not know what was going on. We had the Fragile X test, BAER (hearing test), and other physical test done.
It was a neurologist who blessed us with an evaluation that was clear cut and then he gave us a plan on how to deal with "severe autism". This doctor was a blessing because he was unapologetic and optimistic about our sons future.
I know that God is in all things and He has shown us great and wonderful things through this journey. We are now in our 7 year of trying to recover our son, and through patiences, persistences and grace I believe that we will.
I have another blog at http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/growingdaily I thought it would be easier to do a autism blog so if someone was dealing with autism they would not have to rummage through our daily life. And this will be dedicated to autism.
Hopefully through blogging we can share ideas and learn from each other. I would love to hear about things that you have done and how it worked with your child.
