Day 4

NAME IDENTIFIER:
~The IWK trainer will be named: curly
~The Occupational Therapist will be named: Gungho
~Elijah's primary prt worker will be named: friendly
~The behavior specialist will be called: Dr. Flirt
~Elijah will be called: Buggie
~my husband will be called: DaddaHub
~My daughter Evie will be called: Sunshine
~My son Arless will be called: KofC (king of crazy)
~the early interventionalist wull be called: Tender(just cause she speaks so tender)
~The speach Therapist will be called:p-n-p (prim and proper, just cause she seems so together)
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Usually I'm a night person. You know yawning and tired all day and then at five, ZAP, I'm wide awake and can't get myself to sleep. Well, yesterday was not that way at all. I zonked out in Elijah's cushion hole yesterday. Buggie was in his room playing and the cushion hole is by the stairs, so it was a safe place to sleep right where I could hear him if he went downstairs. So you'd think I'd be juiced but I was so tired for the rest of the evening.

Tender came last night and stayed for two hours. She didn't really play with Elijah since it was on her free time and really just wanted to visit and see how things were going. She's hoping to get some time in with Elijah and see how PRT is doing. I usually clean up at night so that i can get some writing done in the morning, but it wasn't working that way...my mistake was telling DaddaHub that i was just gonna rest my eyes a few minutes on the couch.

So on to todays session. Friendly came in the middle of all the rucus of me suiting Sunshine and KofC up to go to sister#3's. (just stepping in here to say Sunshine accomplished our goal for the summer to teach her to ride her Bike!!!Yippee!). Anyway, Friendly had the fun of dressing my naked Buggie, and then she got in a few responses, which I missed.

Buggie woke up totally hoarsed this morning, but it went away after a bit and was only slightly noticeable. However I think it still bothered him and maybe effected his ears to, cause after everyone left he seemed to really favor his right ear, pushing his hand into it and kind of wincing in pain. However I've already been warned by the doctor that they can't treat it(even if they see it's red) until he gets a fever, incase it's one of those incidences where it will get better on its own.

So soon after the rest of the team arrived and because Friendly was already playing with him, there wasn't the usual discussion right away. Friendly got some time in with him, although he wasn't that into it which was probably due to his throat being sore(he'd sceam and the last end of the scream would fade out with hoarseness). She did get some spinning in though.

At one point Buggy took off upstairs, so I made my request that maybe water play be off today because of his hoarseness and Curly took her minute to tell us what she decided should be done for the day. There was a lot I missed today cause I was kinda zoned out for some reason, but I think I caught the basics.

Firstly she said that perhaps today we could record his sounds(ex. mmm, baa, ia sounds) so naturally because she's the speach therapist P-n-P took over that job. She was looking for sounds the frequency they were used in, if the sound was applied to a certain toy, and how many prompts were made and which promps he actually answered to. So for example if you prompt for the ball ten times and he responded verbally on the third and tenth prompt then he'd she'd put 10 ticks beside ball and circle the third and tenth one.

Secondly, we were asked to watch for the possibility that he may not really be interested in anything at all. For example if he was playing with a block, and you took it from him and prompted for it and he took a long time to ask for it chances are he wasn't really interested in it anyway. .. which is so typical of Buggie. At one point she even said maybe he likes the fact that we are there so he's not leaving not because he wants the toy that your prompting for but just really likes the social aspect of it. So if he wasn't really making an effort for the prompted toy maybe we could remove ourselves away from him.

Thirdly, Curly said that the impression she got from Buggie was that he really didn't understand that he can do physical things. For example, if the opening to the blocks is visible from the front he understands that he can open them, yet when they are turned he doesn't comprehend that he can actually still get the blocks it's just that the block tote is turned. She used an example similiar to this: if us, as normal people, go to a door we know that we can turn the door knob, but Elijah just can't seem to make that connection with some things. She suggested that maybe not so much now but as he gets better at it we could help him get that connection that even though something has changed he can still do the same things with it.

Gungho got her time with Buggie upstairs in his room. She got some nice exchanges for a light chaser toy he hadn't played with much. And she did some tickling with him. I kinda missed it all cause i was downstairs having a quick breakfast. i did happen to catch the blanket game and he liked that for awhile. i was surprised that Buggie ddin't try to get the whole five of us on the bed with him, which is usually what he does! Typical male behavior!

So I got the hard part today -the tail end of the session. he'd had had his snack and we'd had ours(thanks Friendly for the yummy muffins!!) Buggie was sort of all over the place, seemed aggitated although he wasn't crying. i tried the blanket with him, but he just was too toned out. Although P-N-P did notice that I did get the quicker responses. Which is neat, such a nice change from a year ago when he couldn't stand to be in the same room as me.

So the morning went ok, not as good as yesterday, but still a success. Curly noticed that each day he seems a little more accepting of them. His self-stemming(spitting, chewing on hair) seems to be less frequent and he seems to stay quiet instead of all the humming he usually does.

seems like I'm missing something, If I think of anything else I'll be back.

EDITED TO ADD:

As soon as the team was out the door today Elijah came to me as oppsed to my usual hugging him and telling him he did a good job. He wanted me to bounce him on the trampoline. I think he was testing me to see if I would give him freebe's now that the others were gone cause when I prompted him he dropped to the trampoline and cried and cried. Afer a few minutes of tears he got up and very aggressively vocally sorta bully-like asked me to bounce him, which I did. Kind of interesting!

~R