Thursday, May 26, 2011

WOW we have amazing friends

So I set up a fundraising page to pull together the money we'd need to get Dominic an iPad this morning. We guestimated $1000 for ipad plus apps.

within half an hour, we had been gifted a (gently used) ipad and raised $140 which will all go to app cost / case if needed, etc.

This is crazy! We have the most amazing people in our lives. So we should be able to start Dominic with the iPad at Alpine very quickly, and have him all up to speed on it by the time D11 starts in the fall.

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Catching up.

Again, it seems that I haven’t updated in a few weeks. We’ve been busy, it happens.

We had a short visit with my parents early last week, and Dominic did really well behaviorally while they were here.

I met with Dominic’s D11 SPED teacher to talk about what she’d like for Alpine to focus on this summer while Dominic is there full days. The biggie she mentioned was socialization. And that one is difficult for Alpine to work on given the environment there (majority of kids having major issues with social stuff), so I’m using that as (another) excuse to try to get to the gym several times a week. Dominic has a really good time hanging out in the daycare at the gym and that’s excellent unstructured peer play time for him.

Dominic’s last day of kindergarten was 5-23. Its odd to us both that they ended on a Monday, and that they kept the middle and high schoolers until 5-26. He ended the year on a high note with excellent feedback from all parties involved.

June 1 Dominic will be full day at Alpine. We had our monthly parent teacher meeting today and they will be adding some new programming this summer – Numbers, Actions, Attributes (adjectives). We’re as always very thrilled with the level of individual focus that they give him. We talked about fine motor targets that he’s having such a hard time hitting – cutting, writing, etc. They are playing with some options to help with the wriring, one of his biggest problems is he’s not pushing down very hard so the pencil isn’t leaving enough of a mark for him to realize what he’s accomplished. They may add a weight to the pencil, or use a marker, or a pen and we’ll just see what ends up being easiest. We’ve asked them to do whatever they need to and if we need to switch him to a writing implement other than a pencil in the fall, we’ll change the IEP.

One of the big things we’ve been bouncing around has been getting an iPad for Dominic. So that was a topic of discussion both with the SPED at D11 and with Alpine this month. The D11 folks do not have any exposure to using iPads as tools, but Alpine does. What we’d want it for would be to use the various app’s as more creative ways (read: to motivate him) to teach him words, numbers, work on articulation, etc. We may be putting together a fundraiser to raise the money to buy one in the next few weeks, we’ll see. I am guessing that the ipad, case, and apps will likely be around $1000. The interesting thing we learned from Alpine today is that while there are other communicative devices out there geared towards ASD kiddos’, they are rapidly being made obsolete by the iPad. Even tho this was not the original goal of the iPad, its apparently an amazing therapeutic tool. We would probably start out using it solely at Alpine for a few months to get him (and us) used to it, and then phase it into D11. So watch this space for a possible fundraiser link.

Some fun random things Dominic's been doing spontaneously lately:
- Bathing himself (with verbal cues, which we're going to start fading out)
- Randomly identifying the magnetic letters we have on the fridge (and one on the bulletin board at school the other day)
-The dog went nuts when the mail was delivered yesterday... next thing I knew, Dominic was herding him into the bathroom shushing him. It was very cute.
-Very engaged with his movie plots, which is interesting. For Example, he gets Very Upset in the Fox and the Hound where the bear falls off the mountain.
- Making his bed. Well, trying to. but its an attempt. its cute.

Sunday, May 15, 2011

since blogger apparently lost my last post....

Here's the data again. The jump in April for both Mands and Tact is phenomenal.

Remember, Tacts are labels / observations about his environment / vocabulary.


Mands are requests.




Wednesday, May 11, 2011

news!

Alpine just was able to confirm that Dominic will be attending full days again this June and July. We are thrilled about this. From a financial perspective, since we're using our allotment of insurance paid visits, its going to cost us the same out of pocket as it would've for him to just be half days! With school ending May 24, he'll only have one week of mornings off this spring, which is fine.

Also -because they're at capacity (and have been on a waiting list for over a year now), Alpine is moving to a larger building this summer. Not only is it almost right around the corner from my office - its now in school district 11. What we're hoping is that we can get the school district to bus Dominic there at lunchtime every day instead of one of us doing it. that would free up a significant amount of time for us. We've got the request in, and are waiting for the special ed supervisor to approve.

Sunday, May 1, 2011

I can't tell if it was scripting or playing, but either way, he had fun

Today was cold and Dominic's got a little cough, so we didn't let him spend HOURS outside as he wanted to. Instead, he watched CARS for the first time in probably 6 months. He watched it 4 times in a row.

He got out his die cast CARS toys and acted out large portions of the movie in harmony with the TV. For example, the part where Doc Hudson races around the dirt track... Dominic raced his Doc car around the floor in a circle. The part where McQueen pushes The King out of the middle of the track at the end... Dominic's McQueen pushed his King around...

So i don't know if its scripting, but hey, he focused , he wasn't bouncing off the ceiling (as happens often during movie watching), and he amused himself for HOURS.

The End of Autism Awareness Month...

And Jess over at Diary of a Mom has a lovely post. Go read it. ITs worth the time.