Greenspan wisdon

One of the smartest things I heard in the really nice radio show from Greenspan on "How to Handle stimming" was this
When your child is stressed out and stimmy and retreating within themselves ...go back to the BASICS of Floortime of Shared Attention, Back and Forth Play, Sensory Motor Activities , High Affect pleasurable activities
Whenever we have houseguests - and sometimes for no reason at all - R goes through these stressful stimmy periods
At that time I feel just awful becuase suddenly we are disconnected and I am so busy feeling sad about it that I am paralysed
The mantra in those times is
Back to Floortime Basics

IEP Meeting Oct 2008

Overall I thought it went pretty well. I love his teacher and his OT and the principal of the school is very sweet and genial as well.

They all seem to have high opinion and expectations of him. They will say things like "High functioning" for him. It seems a stretch considering he is not pted yet and does not talk J

But I love having optimistic hopeful people around him (and indeed around us ) . His general sweet affectionate easy going nature garners him a ton of sweet spot with pretty much all his therapists

They all talk about how much he surprises them with all that he knows.

His main challenges remain – the intense stimming –( interestingly I started observing more of why and when R stims and its as much to do with boredom as its to do with stress- prior to actually observing him – I used to think it was all stress related )

Speech Therapy

Increased his speech therapy from 30 to 60 sessions annually (2 times twice a week , 30 minutes each time ).

She would not commit to one on one so it may even end up being 3 on one. The SLP said that this will help her do Speech therapy in a group and encourage pretend play. For a non verbal child- this rationale makes no sense to me whatsoever.

But I do understand the school has very limited resources. The SLP services several schools and is only in his school twice a week. So it did not make much sense insisting on it

Plus he is anyway getting Private Speech therapy 3-4 times a week at home.

Private SLP is POSITVE he has Apraxia. School SLP is also sure but also said that we will not get a diagnosis until school system does it – we need to reconnect on that on April 09

We gave the SLP some ideas on harnessing his ability to read in producing sounds. She was surprised that he knows the sounds of all the letters – ( we were talking about how he once spelled out APPLE – as APEL and Swan as SWON – which really is far more correct phonetically than their real spellings )

 

OT

Increased his OT from 30 – 45 sessions annually (2 session per week for the first half of the school year)

I honestly believe sensory issues are core to everything for R. And this is also one of the things that is next to impossible to get more support for – he does go for 30 minutes to Musical Gymnastics a week but its too far to do more !

Anyway his teacher who I do trust said that they will employ Sensory strategies in class

W e also discussed his new phobia on postural insecurity ( how I wish we had not gone to the circus ).

And how one other phobias have disappeared ( teeth brushing )

 

Other goals

Currently R does not interact with peers at all so some of his goals are to do with that – Turn taking ( thanks L for that idea )

Greet peer by some approximation of name like Huh M ( for Hi Mathew)

Start labeling things

Use more PECS

Attend without stimming ( I also told them that he must have sensory breaks in order to be successful in that )

All in all it was a very good meeting

This is my life

Life has been very relentless lately
I am traveling so much. Even when I am home things are just so distracted hurried and out of control
Today after a day of non stop work me and some of my collegues were walking back through China Town to our hotel
And suddenly between two tall buildings .. I caught glimpse of the gorgeous Golden Gate Bridge
Suddenly my perspective shifted.
My busy days have beautiful things all around me that I am not drinking in
I keep waiting for some magic days of leisure, freedom and happiness.
They never come you know .. one sort of work is exchanged by another sort of work
But these little pauses of beauty and happiness are aplenty

The much awaited playroom

Well the playroom was finally done last month - I am also adding a pix of the bedroom - The sad thing is that Rohan hates this swing that I bought with so much hope that he would really enjoy it
His gran did all the painting in his playroom





here is our bedroom ... I was really looking for an English Bed and Breakfast look