It has been so long since I have blogged that I have all of these topics rolling around in my head. I will try to tackle them one by one with the shortest first:)
JJ finished music therapy the beginning of August. He seemed to enjoy it and likes music a lot. He still wouldn't interact with the other kids in the class and even when they do the story time and the kids move 4 feet into the center of the circle he wouldn't let me remain at the wall - I had to be right there next to him touching him for him to feel safe.
But, there is a new speech therapist working with him (an associate of Ms. Erin) and JJ has been doing GREAT with her. He isn't having any problems with interacting with her, responding to her, talking to her, doing what she asks him to do, etc. He is finally feeling safe enough in that environment to do speech therapy like every other kid would do it. She has added some occupational therapy components on recommendation by the OT who is also in the practice.
My work schedule has increased, so in an attempt to keep working only 2 days a week (except 2 weeks ago, and this week, and next week...oh who am I kidding) my husband takes him to Tuesday morning therapy now. I miss taking him as I know that I follow through more during the week with the current therapy being worked on than my husband does, but for this season of life this is reality. The new SPL is very pleased with JJ's progress.
Myself, I see his speech improving stalling a bit. He still has to be reminded for the /f/ sound. He doesn't spontaneously enunciate it properly (it is always a /s/ sound). But as soon as I say "try again" he is able to identify in his own mind the word he mispronounced and do it correctly. The SPL assures me that this is huge and should be encouraging to me. He still struggles mightily with being able to sound out /f/ in the middle of a word, and some struggle at the end of a word.
While I don't see much improvement, Sunday we saw a friend we haven't talked with for months and she was quite shocked with his volume of speech, and said she could mostly understand him (even if some of that came from context). So, that was encouraging.
I was also encouraged that on Sunday we attended a home school kick off picnic. There were A LOT of people there. I would hate to overestimate but I think there were possibly 130+ adults and kids there. It felt like there were 100 kids alone. Anyway, JJ took off and played with kids that I know he doesn't know. With everything in the past year we haven't seen this group for a year, and at least 1/2 of the group was new. Thus, these were strangers to JJ. Yet, he ran off with them and while he mostly stood off to the side and watched the chaos of groups of kids playing, he did find some to play with and didn't require a sibling to be near him. It was the best social improvement I have seen yet.
He is also feeling much safer at church. Which means that he runs from me and won't stay put. I guess that is progress in one way, but it is sure frustrating!
He loves to be read to at night. He still needs me to lay with him at night. Every single night he says to me, "will you sleep with me Mommy?" Like something has changed in the past 5 years! But it is sweet that he always asks and doesn't take it for granted. Then every night while we are laying there he says to me, "Mommy I miss you at work Mommy." Bedtime is the one time he gets my undivided attention. I love snuggling with him. He has taken up a preference for having his back scratched. I also see that as progress as he used to have such sensory issues and back rubbing or scratching was very uncomfortable for him.
Oh, he had a birthday this month too! It was the week after Beautiful's wedding. He was sooo impatient for his birthday. They got back from their honeymoon and gift opening day happened to fall on his birthday. Thus, the in-laws were here for gift opening...and we had left over wedding cake as his birthday cake lol! It will have been the best decorated birthday cake he ever got lol!
He is now 5. I am starting on some preschool activities with him. He has so little interest that I have to keep it low key or he refuses to do anything. He is starting to like to use a pen. Thus, I have him use a dry erase marker tracing numbers and letters. He likes to do that. He still holds the pen extremely awkwardly and it shocks me that he can trace so well with that grip. He refuses to hold it any differently. I have asked the SPL what to do about that since there is an OT in their office she can ask. They said to hold off for now. He used to just do jagged lines closely together...but in the past 2 months he is actually drawing circles/bodies for animals/people!!!!!!!!! I am very happy about that progression.
I am shocked with his cleverness. The kid doesn't forget anything that he hears and he can argue a point so logically that I am left stunned that I have been outsmarted by a 5 year old. One that comes to mind was over the weekend I was telling James and Faith to clean up their clothes. Usually JJ is in there and creates a mess of what they are trying to clean so I asked him to leave. He responded with, "this is my room too, why do I have to leave?" Obviously the correct answer is "because I asked you to leave so you don't hinder your sibling's cleaning efforts" but his use of logic astounds me and usually stops me short. If I give him one answer now, I can be guaranteed that he will remember it and use it to try to win an argument with me in the future if I stray even a little bit. I am used to Grace who just screams mean things at me that aren't based in this universe much less logic, or Superman and Faith who just mutter under their breath but do it. So, it takes me aback to actually have to come up with logical answers. It is like raising Buddy all over again lol! Oh, wait, Buddy still argues using logic with me!
This got much longer than I anticipated. Off to another 12 hour day of work, and looking forward snuggles at the end of the day with this little guy who misses me when I am gone and continues to give me much enjoyment:)
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