Wow, I'm behind. Sorry about that.
Lets see - Thanksgiving week went swimmingly. Dominic's doing great, continuing to make steady small steps. The latest little things are.
~ He's loved the move Cars for years. A year or so ago, we got CARS 2 from Netflix and he melted into tears/ refused to watch it. (it was DIFFERENT). So we didn't buy it. Over Thanksgiving, we got free movie channels from DirectTV and DVR'd it just to see what would happen. He LOVED it. It has replaced Scooby Doo for the favorite du Jour. He is sleeping with his cars again.
~Yesterday, we had our power upgraded in the house which meant no power until about 6pm. He was distraught when he got home that we wouldn't turn on the TV for him, BUT - I was able to show him that the lights didn't work either and he stopped the tantrum. he GOT IT!
~~~~~
We met with Dominic's new SPED teacher today. We like her - she's ABA trained and very child focused (read: not budget focused). We talked about what we'd like to see on his next IEP (somehow we're due for it in January, wow) and some of those things include:
- More opportunities for independent peer to peer conversation/socialization
- Maybe changing the reading program to a whole word program (the one he's using is going SO SLOW that this might be better)
- working on apraxia (articulation), working on reducing scripted responses
- forcing more functional speech to get needs met (eg, things like raising his hand and asking for a bathroom pass)
- working on life skill stuff (things like learning what an exit sign is/means; memorizing his phone number)
- coming up with creative ways to make numbers meaningful (we think he;'s bored silly with "hand me number 6" kind of things)
- Creative ways to have him doing more one on one stuff w/peers - maybe pairing him off in a lunch club kind of thing w/an older kid, or having other kids read to him. encouraging relationships.
We also talked about how difficult fine motor, particularly writing, is for him. We agreed that we aren't quite to the point yet, but are very close, to stopping handwriting and moving him 100% (with the exception of his name) to a flat screen keyboard (ipad). she had some suggestions around theraputty play to warm up his hands before working on handwriting at home and will also send me some ipad app's for us to load. I expect that we will change his IEP to allow all work to be done on a keyboard very soon.
We talked about next year - she is a military wife and therefore not 100% sure if she'll be here next year but is encouraging us to push for an ABBLS and Autism trained SPED for him (the intermediate one currently at Audobon is not) and to leave him with the younger group of SPED kids. Apparently things change a lot when you move to intermediate SPED (who knew). So we will wordsmith next years IEP to strongly encourage those features of a SPED teacher and I'll get out my advocacy hat starting spring breakish. there is no reason the school cannot send one of their teachers to the autism lab and get them up and running on the ABBLS. Its a district resource and therefore not an expense.
~~~~~
We are currently in the middle of parasite protocol #4 (of 12). We are seeing worms coming out. Better out than in! We'll see what the gains from this one are as 1, 2, and 3 all were significant.
Lets see - Thanksgiving week went swimmingly. Dominic's doing great, continuing to make steady small steps. The latest little things are.
~ He's loved the move Cars for years. A year or so ago, we got CARS 2 from Netflix and he melted into tears/ refused to watch it. (it was DIFFERENT). So we didn't buy it. Over Thanksgiving, we got free movie channels from DirectTV and DVR'd it just to see what would happen. He LOVED it. It has replaced Scooby Doo for the favorite du Jour. He is sleeping with his cars again.
~Yesterday, we had our power upgraded in the house which meant no power until about 6pm. He was distraught when he got home that we wouldn't turn on the TV for him, BUT - I was able to show him that the lights didn't work either and he stopped the tantrum. he GOT IT!
~~~~~
We met with Dominic's new SPED teacher today. We like her - she's ABA trained and very child focused (read: not budget focused). We talked about what we'd like to see on his next IEP (somehow we're due for it in January, wow) and some of those things include:
- More opportunities for independent peer to peer conversation/socialization
- Maybe changing the reading program to a whole word program (the one he's using is going SO SLOW that this might be better)
- working on apraxia (articulation), working on reducing scripted responses
- forcing more functional speech to get needs met (eg, things like raising his hand and asking for a bathroom pass)
- working on life skill stuff (things like learning what an exit sign is/means; memorizing his phone number)
- coming up with creative ways to make numbers meaningful (we think he;'s bored silly with "hand me number 6" kind of things)
- Creative ways to have him doing more one on one stuff w/peers - maybe pairing him off in a lunch club kind of thing w/an older kid, or having other kids read to him. encouraging relationships.
We also talked about how difficult fine motor, particularly writing, is for him. We agreed that we aren't quite to the point yet, but are very close, to stopping handwriting and moving him 100% (with the exception of his name) to a flat screen keyboard (ipad). she had some suggestions around theraputty play to warm up his hands before working on handwriting at home and will also send me some ipad app's for us to load. I expect that we will change his IEP to allow all work to be done on a keyboard very soon.
We talked about next year - she is a military wife and therefore not 100% sure if she'll be here next year but is encouraging us to push for an ABBLS and Autism trained SPED for him (the intermediate one currently at Audobon is not) and to leave him with the younger group of SPED kids. Apparently things change a lot when you move to intermediate SPED (who knew). So we will wordsmith next years IEP to strongly encourage those features of a SPED teacher and I'll get out my advocacy hat starting spring breakish. there is no reason the school cannot send one of their teachers to the autism lab and get them up and running on the ABBLS. Its a district resource and therefore not an expense.
~~~~~
We are currently in the middle of parasite protocol #4 (of 12). We are seeing worms coming out. Better out than in! We'll see what the gains from this one are as 1, 2, and 3 all were significant.
No comments:
Post a Comment