Wow it’s the end of January

Catch up post…

 

 

So – I am finding it harder and harder to sit down and write out whole blogs about how things are going.  They are going overall relatively well.  Dominic is almost 13 and having teenager attitude regularly. He eats everything that’s not nailed down. We have 5 sessions of various therapies a week – 3 OT and 2 ST.  The speech therapy is in the mornings before school and going very well. Occupational therapy is Monday and Wednesday after school at home, where we are focusing one day a week on cooking and the other day a week on fine motor with a big goal of being able to write his name in cursive.  Tuesday after school we go to clinic based OT at which they are working very hard on reflex integration with a therapist who has Musgatova training.

 

Protocol wise, while our foundation hasn’t changed (Ioncleanse footbaths and prime my body hemp oil),  we continue to branch out. I saw a wonderful article a month or so ago about reducing androgens herbally, so we’ve been giving that protocol a whirl. We are noticing calmness, and significantly more attempts at back and forth conversation out of Dominic. We’ll take it. 

 

In the mean time, there’s a new product that some of my close friends have been testing with their kids.   And its been pretty amazing, so we are gearing up to give it a try here.  It actually arrives Monday, so I need to make some freezer space before then.

 

Dominic is continuing to “earn” money by doing chores. He now has mastered cleaning up dog poop – I had him rubber gloves and a bag and tell him to go pick it up, and without supervision he does so. Next one we are working hard on is vacuuming. He hates it. But he does it with significant verbal prompting.  He gets to earn dimes in all his therapy sessions and at school.   We had homework over the last weekend (it was momentous as he rarely has been given homework due to his quantity of after school intense therapies).  It involved adding up dimes.  It was perfect. What we are hoping to get to is both math (multiples of 10), the concept of earning money and the concept of saving. We are getting there. 

 

Dominic now cooks dinner for the family every Monday night which is going rather well. I’m writing out in small words the instructions and he really does stay focused on them. I believe he’s reading them at some level, but he struggles hard.  So we keep at it. He is quite proud when he produces a meal. It’s really cute.

 

We are making big summer plans… as Dominic has aged out of the YMCA camp he’s gone to, we’re hiring a “nanny/companion” for him for the summer who was one of his camp counselors last summer. She and he will hang out about 5 hours a day (from when Daddy goes to work to when Mommy gets done with work) and do things like the zoo, go swimming, go hiking, walk the dogs, etc.  Basically her job will be to keep him active and busy.   I’m excited and apprehensive because I want him busy and having fun, but I’m sad that he won’t have the intentional socialization which is what I liked so much about the Y.  It means that we will be looking for socialization opportunities and scheduling them as often as we can.  

And hey look - he is tall enough to do the laundry!!