Homework from the psychologist

So we started back up with our psychologist. She has had some training in Floortime – but frankly admits that I know more than her. This is one of the reasons I like her lots – she is very no-nonsense. None of the fake puffery I see in many consultants and she says a lot of things which are very very astute

She said she sees her role as simply guiding us and encouraging us – being a sort of professional sounding board.

I like that

She was the one who when I saw her almost 19 months ago at the start of our Autism journey. She summed up R's strengths and weaknesses pretty succinctly and said two things that have really turned out to be true

1. R likes numbers and letters etc because they are constant things in an ever changing world. ( I further believe that R uses these constants to tune out the changes – much less now than before but he does do it )
   
2. She also said R would benefit greatly from our positive and worry free attitude. This has turned out to be unbelievably true. Inspite of lackluster parent therapy ( in terms of sheer tonnage ) R has come a long way
   

She also felt she saw a lot of positive change in R. Specifically

1. Much more interest in everything – playing with all the toys she had – somewhat appropriately ( if very immaturely ) example she had a rabbit connected an electronic switch – which she would press and the rabbit would jump – R was very interested in trying to figure out how she was making him ( the rabbit ) do it rather than play with the rabbit. Stuffed animals mean very little to him. But he did play with a puzzle and with her dolls etc
   
2. She also said she saw a much calmer demenour ( this is a pet peeve of mine – most people make such a big deal about stimming – I really think – simply because it looks odd even abnormal and different – and see the absence of stimming as a profound change rather than simply less stress or better sensory organization )
   

Anyway here is our homework

1. Pretend play
   
2. Use hyperlexia to go to action words and categorize thing- example- lay our flash cards and say" what do we eat ?"
   
3. Get a mother's helper to play with him – maybe an 11 year old ( gradually keep reducing the age of the person whom he interacts with )