School and ABA

Garrett has ABA for two hours, four days a week. We drive the 35 minutes home, feed him some lunch and send him off on the bus. When he gets home, he usually doesn't wake up as I get him off the bus.

He gets up at 6:45 and is going non-stop until 3pm. This poor kid is exhausted.

I don't know how well he's doing in preschool because he can't tell me. There's a notebook that comes home every day to tell me what they did in class but I don't actually know how HE is doing.

I still feel like he's making some progress developmentally, but his behaviors have gotten worse. The spitting has returned. The headbanging has come back, too. He actually kicked himself in the head today while we were in the car.

I know that this is going to take a long time, but it's hard to watch.

First day of school

We had a very busy day today. We rushed out the door at 6:45am to take Daddy to work and head across town to ABA. Got out of ABA at 10, home at 10:40, packed his big backpack and ran outside to wait for the bus at 11. He didn't get home until after 3 this afternoon and he was exhausted.

I'm assuming that he had a good day because I didn't get a call from his teacher. But since he can't tell me how his day went, I have no clue. His bus aide said that he spit the whole way home, which doesn't surprise me, considering how tired he was.

Hopefully the week continues without any problems.

Preschool!

Garrett will start special ed preschool next Tuesday. We went to the school to meet his teaching team tonight. He loved the classroom. He went straight for the trampoline.

Garrett will be taking the bus to school after ABA and will be at school for three hours, five days a week. He'll be getting speech at school. They didn't include Occupational Therapy in his IEP, but his teacher said that they do work on fine and gross motor skills and if she sees something that needs attention, she'll make sure that they put it in for him.

Updates and such

We are working on eating with utensils now. He's doing pretty good, we just have to keep an eye on him and make sure he doesn't try to use his other hand to grab the food.



He really likes to draw, but he started chomping on crayons again, so we're sticking with a magnadoodle for now.

His ABA team is concerned that he is prompt dependent. He knows the sign for drink. He has used it independently on occasion. He knows when he is expected to use it, but will not sign it unless he is being prompted. We have slowly started to use less hand over hand, but I still need to touch his elbow for him to sign. This isn't good.

We thought that he knew what his signs meant, but now we're not sure. We tried to teach him "please" at his OT session on Friday. As soon as we took his hand, he started to sign drink eventhough there were no cups in sight.

So many new things!

Finally, at 31 months... Garrett draws with crayons (instead of eating them).



He also eats spanish rice and plays peek-a-boo.

Applesauce!

Garrett has been eating applesauce since Tuesday. I tried to feed it to him with a spoon and he wouldn't go for it. I was ready to give up, but decided to put some applesauce right on his tray. He tried to move it and didn't like that it stuck to his hand so he wiped it on the edge of the tray. When it still didn't come off, he licked his fingers. His face lit up, so I knew that he liked it. I set the whole bowl of applesauce in front of him and let him go at it. He shoveled into his mouth with his hand.

He's had it four times since then and he really likes it.

Another big step for Garrett.

Occupational Therapy - Session 2 with Michelle

Michelle gave us a new sensory brush and taught me to combine the brushing protocol with joint compression. We did 10 reps at the beginning of the session and Garrett calmed down almost immediately. He sat down and played with us for about 40 minutes. I'm supposed to do it every two hours, but Michelle said that we can just try to do it 2 to 4 times a day and work it into our routine.

Michelle is really trying to work with me on Garrett's feeding issues, since most of his problems are sensory related. We made a list of foods that he will always eat, foods that he eats in cycles, and foods that he always refuses. She also made note of his new preference for straight-from-the-freezer frozen waffles and the fact that he takes bites of bagels, spits them out and then goes back to them to eat.

We are going to combine textures to see what he does. It's going to be a lot of trial and error.