He's Back!!

A few weeks ago I mentioned that our favorite OT student from last summer, Jonny, had decided to take a job back in Colorado and would be coming out once he finished his OT national certification process.  He came back last week.  While it will be a few weeks before he’s official and working with Dominic, we had him over for dinner last Thursday to catch up and visit.

 

Dominic RAN out the door to greet him, he was that excited.  

Jonny was blown away. Remember, he left last fall, in September, so we’ve had 8 months of AMAZING progress since then.  Dominic was initiating play with the dogs (which Jonny’d never seen) and talking up a storm. I showed Jonny some of the OT related exercises we’ve done regularly.  The one that blew his mind is the one where I turn the BOSU upside down, make Dominic  balance on the teetering top, on one foot and do a cross body hand slapping kind of exercise.   Apparently we were way further along with some of the things Jonny wants to do with Dominic than he could’ve guessed.

The other moment that absolutely knocked Jonny’s socks off was when Dominic went to his room, got a lego kit that I brought home from Autism One for him.  (one that’s for ages 6-12, so its age appropriate), told us “Want to open it”, then proceeded to sit down at the table and complete the lego kit while following its pictorial directions.  He needed help a couple of times, but HE DID IT HIMSELF.  The level of executive functioning, self-initiation, and FOCUS on an activity astonished Jonny.    We concurred that I’m probably going to go broke buying lego kits.  I’m okay with that.

So, once he’s official and all, we have high hopes for Jonny and Dominic this summer.  Jonny’s comment was that you could see the speech and cognition and its like there’s just  a wall between us and them right now.  That wall is the brain injury that we are finally ready to address.   And you know what  my feelings about walls are – we go around them, we go over them, or we go through them.  So here we go!