We fired Jesse's home therapist this past week. While it really sucks, in a way, it was a huge relief in another. Since May, we've put up with multiple lates and sick days, coffee being continuously spilled on our carpets, schedule changes to accommodate her, and a decreasing level of patience on her part. The straw that broke the camels back, however, was her posting about Jesse (using his name even) on her Facebook page. (Not to mention that it was post DURING his therapy session that day.
So, we're going to try without therapy for a few months. We're going to do playdates and playgroups and biweekly speech therapy. We may enroll in toddler Mother Goose or some other more structured activities. Jesse's language has come so far these past few months that it's now within the normal range for a child his age. So we're going to focus more on play and socialization, which he's been really missing out on, in my opinion.
Other big news is that Jesse's is starting to seem ready for potty learning! In the past couple of days Jesse has requested to use the potty to pee and he pooped on the potty without any suggestion from me or his father. This is so exciting, because I would *love* for him to be out of diapers before the next kiddo arrives. Which is the other big change we're expecting. "Trouble" is due to arrive some time in March.
I guess that's all for now.
Showing posts with label speech therapy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label speech therapy. Show all posts
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Wow, it's been a while!!!
I've been a very bad blogger this summer! I guess I just have so much to blog about that it keeps building up and building up and I need such a huge chunk of time to do it all that I keep putting it off....you know how it goes. I live by the Procratinator's Creed: Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow.
Anyhow, there are a few things I want to post about, including Jesse's 6 month follow-up with Dr. C (developmental pediatrician). But right now I'm posting about Jesse's speech therapy.
We FINALLY, after FIFTEEN MONTHS of waiting, got Jesse in to see the SLP, Kim, that works with the development program at the Janeway. It was a good appointment in all...and it lasted for about an hour and forty-five minutes, which was kind of surprising to me. I figured it would be an hour at the most.
At first the way she spoke to Jesse was very exaggerated and simple, but after about a half hour she seemed to get the fact that there's nothing wrong with his receptive language. (I did also tell her that his private SLP had just tested his receptive language a few weeks ago and found it to be perfectly normal.) She played with him a lot to get a grasp of what he was capable of, and she spoke with Jesse's home therapist quite a bit too. She wanted to know what programs he was currently doing and how he was doing with them.
Overall, she thinks he's doing really well. He's rapidly gaining language. Right now she wants us to work more on verbs, which we've been doing anyways (and are coming along!). She thinks speech sounds should take a back seat to more general language development. I don't think I really agree with this though, since he's rapidly gaining language fairly naturally as it is now. She had some suggestions for his therapy, too, which was great. She's very familiar with ABA therapy and so can make suggestions for programs to work on. And we're planning a home visit for later this month.
My one big concern though is that she generally only sees her patients once every 2 months. I'm not liking this, since he's been going weekly and it's obviously working. But Kim said that she generally works in more of a consultative role with the whole therapy team. I think that could be partly true, but I'm also pretty certain it's in large part due to lack of resources. So, we've made the decision to keep up our sessions, on a biweekly basis, with Jesse's private speech therapist.
Hopefully tomorrow I'll get a chance to update on Jesse's appointment with Dr. C.
Anyhow, there are a few things I want to post about, including Jesse's 6 month follow-up with Dr. C (developmental pediatrician). But right now I'm posting about Jesse's speech therapy.
We FINALLY, after FIFTEEN MONTHS of waiting, got Jesse in to see the SLP, Kim, that works with the development program at the Janeway. It was a good appointment in all...and it lasted for about an hour and forty-five minutes, which was kind of surprising to me. I figured it would be an hour at the most.
At first the way she spoke to Jesse was very exaggerated and simple, but after about a half hour she seemed to get the fact that there's nothing wrong with his receptive language. (I did also tell her that his private SLP had just tested his receptive language a few weeks ago and found it to be perfectly normal.) She played with him a lot to get a grasp of what he was capable of, and she spoke with Jesse's home therapist quite a bit too. She wanted to know what programs he was currently doing and how he was doing with them.
Overall, she thinks he's doing really well. He's rapidly gaining language. Right now she wants us to work more on verbs, which we've been doing anyways (and are coming along!). She thinks speech sounds should take a back seat to more general language development. I don't think I really agree with this though, since he's rapidly gaining language fairly naturally as it is now. She had some suggestions for his therapy, too, which was great. She's very familiar with ABA therapy and so can make suggestions for programs to work on. And we're planning a home visit for later this month.
My one big concern though is that she generally only sees her patients once every 2 months. I'm not liking this, since he's been going weekly and it's obviously working. But Kim said that she generally works in more of a consultative role with the whole therapy team. I think that could be partly true, but I'm also pretty certain it's in large part due to lack of resources. So, we've made the decision to keep up our sessions, on a biweekly basis, with Jesse's private speech therapist.
Hopefully tomorrow I'll get a chance to update on Jesse's appointment with Dr. C.
Monday, June 21, 2010
Receptive Language
At last Monday's speech therapy appointment the SLP tested Jesse's receptive language. What she expected to take 2-3 sessions took all of 20 minutes. His attending was awesome! And it turns out that Jesse is right on target! He scored 50th percentile for 2 - 2 1/2 year olds. I'd always thought that his understanding was pretty normal, and now we know it is.
Monday, May 10, 2010
Amazed!!!
We had our weekly speech therapy appointment this morning. SLP was very impressed with Jesse's vocabulary growth over the past couple of weeks. In the two months since we started speech therapy, Jesse has gone from being about 14 months behind (12 month level at 26 months of age), to being just 4 months behind (24 month level at 28 months of age). I'm over the moon!!!
Monday, April 19, 2010
Put yer feet up....
...this is gonna be a long one!
Tomorrow is Jesse's Individual Support Services Plan (ISSP) meeting. It'll be here at the house, so I don't have to find a sitter (thank goodness). There will only be a few people in attendance - the Autism Program's social worker, Jesse's senior therapist (ST) and her supervisor, and myself. Jesse's SLP can't make it, but she emailed me a progress note. Steve can't make it either, since he's already at his max vacation time this year. He helped me write up our own contribution to the meeting anyways. It's basically just a sheet of paper with the heading "strengths" written on the left and "needs" written on the right. We came up with the following...
Strengths:
-non-verbal communication
-growing vocabulary
-will attempt new words
-imitation
-high energy
-great fine motor and gross motor skills
-likes to be around adults and other children
-transitions easily from one place to another and from one activity to another.
Needs:
-to work on increasing vocabulary and phrases
-to work on decreasing toe walking
-to work on interactive play with other children
-to work on not running away when out in public
-has difficulty breaking certain routines
Jesse's SLPs progress note also listed some strengths and needs, none of which were a surprise to me. It was very encouraging though, that she seems so pleased with his progress thus far. It will be interesting to hear what his ST and her supervisor have to say at the meeting tomorrow.
I'm also really looking forward to this, because the funding for Jesse's home therapy program will be approved. We'll actually be able to pay whoever (whomever?) we hire to be Jesse's home therapist!
Speaking of which, we have an interview set up for Wednesday night! I'm very nervous about interviewing someone. I've never really done that before, aside from sitters for Jesse. I suppose this shouldn't be that different though. I definitely need to prepare for it though! I also have to go through the rest of the resumes and try to find a few more candidates to interview. I'm thinking 5-6 interviews should be sufficient. I really want to find someone who's high energy, friendly, creative, and dependable.
Also, I figured now would be as good a time as any to share an update on Jesse's vocabulary. It's growing so much! It's very difficult to keep up with now too, since he'll at least try to imitate almost any word you ask him to say.
Imitated/prompted words:
Koko (the daycare owner's dog)
ears
hair
knees
toes
on
out
boots
shoes
go ("doe")
duck
gone ("don")
ball
arm
god
mouse
purse
pee
cheese
Spontaneous Words:
Mom
Da/Dad
Nan
Pop
Josh ("Dosh")
Jesse ("esseez")
Anna ("Nana" - daycare owner's daughter)
no
this
up
nose
baby
hi
bye
juice ("dooce")
bees (refers to nursing)
boo
uh-oh
off
eyes
poop ("doot")
hot
beep
more ("no")
ta-da
night-night
hop
ding-dong ("ning-nong")
Jesse also has a handful of two-word phrases now too, including "bye bees/Mom/Dad/Nan/Pop/Josh," "my baby," "no, Jesse's!" and "uh oh Da!"
It's quite a bit better than the list from March 11th, which was the last time I did this. And so, so much better than the 5 words he was using when we had our first speech therapy appointment with his current SLP on March 8th. That was only 6 weeks ago! His non-verbal communication has also come a long way since then, which is very helpful. He's much better able to communicate with us what he wants (to eat, for example) and when he wants us to play with him.
There's so much more to tell, but it's getting late and we have an early rise tomorrow. Speech therapy is at 8:30 and the ISSP is at 10 am! Hopefully I'll get a chance to update tomorrow.
Tomorrow is Jesse's Individual Support Services Plan (ISSP) meeting. It'll be here at the house, so I don't have to find a sitter (thank goodness). There will only be a few people in attendance - the Autism Program's social worker, Jesse's senior therapist (ST) and her supervisor, and myself. Jesse's SLP can't make it, but she emailed me a progress note. Steve can't make it either, since he's already at his max vacation time this year. He helped me write up our own contribution to the meeting anyways. It's basically just a sheet of paper with the heading "strengths" written on the left and "needs" written on the right. We came up with the following...
Strengths:
-non-verbal communication
-growing vocabulary
-will attempt new words
-imitation
-high energy
-great fine motor and gross motor skills
-likes to be around adults and other children
-transitions easily from one place to another and from one activity to another.
Needs:
-to work on increasing vocabulary and phrases
-to work on decreasing toe walking
-to work on interactive play with other children
-to work on not running away when out in public
-has difficulty breaking certain routines
Jesse's SLPs progress note also listed some strengths and needs, none of which were a surprise to me. It was very encouraging though, that she seems so pleased with his progress thus far. It will be interesting to hear what his ST and her supervisor have to say at the meeting tomorrow.
I'm also really looking forward to this, because the funding for Jesse's home therapy program will be approved. We'll actually be able to pay whoever (whomever?) we hire to be Jesse's home therapist!
Speaking of which, we have an interview set up for Wednesday night! I'm very nervous about interviewing someone. I've never really done that before, aside from sitters for Jesse. I suppose this shouldn't be that different though. I definitely need to prepare for it though! I also have to go through the rest of the resumes and try to find a few more candidates to interview. I'm thinking 5-6 interviews should be sufficient. I really want to find someone who's high energy, friendly, creative, and dependable.
Also, I figured now would be as good a time as any to share an update on Jesse's vocabulary. It's growing so much! It's very difficult to keep up with now too, since he'll at least try to imitate almost any word you ask him to say.
Imitated/prompted words:
Koko (the daycare owner's dog)
ears
hair
knees
toes
on
out
boots
shoes
go ("doe")
duck
gone ("don")
ball
arm
god
mouse
purse
pee
cheese
Spontaneous Words:
Mom
Da/Dad
Nan
Pop
Josh ("Dosh")
Jesse ("esseez")
Anna ("Nana" - daycare owner's daughter)
no
this
up
nose
baby
hi
bye
juice ("dooce")
bees (refers to nursing)
boo
uh-oh
off
eyes
poop ("doot")
hot
beep
more ("no")
ta-da
night-night
hop
ding-dong ("ning-nong")
Jesse also has a handful of two-word phrases now too, including "bye bees/Mom/Dad/Nan/Pop/Josh," "my baby," "no, Jesse's!" and "uh oh Da!"
It's quite a bit better than the list from March 11th, which was the last time I did this. And so, so much better than the 5 words he was using when we had our first speech therapy appointment with his current SLP on March 8th. That was only 6 weeks ago! His non-verbal communication has also come a long way since then, which is very helpful. He's much better able to communicate with us what he wants (to eat, for example) and when he wants us to play with him.
There's so much more to tell, but it's getting late and we have an early rise tomorrow. Speech therapy is at 8:30 and the ISSP is at 10 am! Hopefully I'll get a chance to update tomorrow.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Now we're getting somewhere
So sorry for slacking on this blog. There's just so much going on right now. My husband, Steve, was in a car accident on Thursday. Steve is mostly OK, though he's having some back pain and had to take some time off work. The car is toast. We were really hoping to get another couple of years out of Steve's car, so that we wouldn't have to be making 2 car payments, but God/fate/karma/whatever had other plans. I'm sure we'll get through, but we've been really busy trying to get all of this straightened out.
In the meantime, Jesse is doing really well. His language is really coming along. His list of words, both imitated and spontaneous, grows daily. His SLP is really happy with his progress. I also have a book I'm reading that is giving me some great ideas on how to help this along at home as well. It's called Motivate to Communicate. It's written for kids on the spectrum, but I have a feeling it would really work well for kids with a "simple" speech delay as well. I'm not that far into it yet, but I'm hoping to have it finished by the weekend, and can give you a review of it.
We've also been assigned a senior therapist! Yay!!! She's actually still training, so her supervisor will be coming along with her and helping her, which is great. They both paid us a visit this morning. We mostly just went over Jesse's history and what our main concerns were. They also gave us a bit of an overview of what the next few weeks will consist of. On April 12th, they'll return and do Jesse's evaluations, and then on April 19th (tentatively) we'll have Jesse's ISSP (Individualized Supports and Services Plan...I think that's what it stands for). That's when we'll come up with the plan of attack for Jesse. It's only when we have the ISSP that we get funding for the home therapist. (Speaking of which, we still haven't hired anyone yet. I have about 40 resumes here, though, to look through.)
I also keep meaning to do a little book report, of sorts, on the book I just finished a couple of days ago. It's called Changing the Course of Autism: A Scientific Approach for Parents and Physicians. It's not an easy read by any stretch of the imagination. There's a lot of anatomy and physiology and immunology knowledge needed to understand it well. It did challenge me to recall a lot of what I learned in my B.Sc. and my B.N. I think it's worth reading though, for any parent who has a child on the spectrum. (And for any doctor treating a child on the spectrum.) Jesse's waking up from his nap, so I can't get into it now, but I will definitely give a review of this book later.
In the meantime, Jesse is doing really well. His language is really coming along. His list of words, both imitated and spontaneous, grows daily. His SLP is really happy with his progress. I also have a book I'm reading that is giving me some great ideas on how to help this along at home as well. It's called Motivate to Communicate. It's written for kids on the spectrum, but I have a feeling it would really work well for kids with a "simple" speech delay as well. I'm not that far into it yet, but I'm hoping to have it finished by the weekend, and can give you a review of it.
We've also been assigned a senior therapist! Yay!!! She's actually still training, so her supervisor will be coming along with her and helping her, which is great. They both paid us a visit this morning. We mostly just went over Jesse's history and what our main concerns were. They also gave us a bit of an overview of what the next few weeks will consist of. On April 12th, they'll return and do Jesse's evaluations, and then on April 19th (tentatively) we'll have Jesse's ISSP (Individualized Supports and Services Plan...I think that's what it stands for). That's when we'll come up with the plan of attack for Jesse. It's only when we have the ISSP that we get funding for the home therapist. (Speaking of which, we still haven't hired anyone yet. I have about 40 resumes here, though, to look through.)
I also keep meaning to do a little book report, of sorts, on the book I just finished a couple of days ago. It's called Changing the Course of Autism: A Scientific Approach for Parents and Physicians. It's not an easy read by any stretch of the imagination. There's a lot of anatomy and physiology and immunology knowledge needed to understand it well. It did challenge me to recall a lot of what I learned in my B.Sc. and my B.N. I think it's worth reading though, for any parent who has a child on the spectrum. (And for any doctor treating a child on the spectrum.) Jesse's waking up from his nap, so I can't get into it now, but I will definitely give a review of this book later.
Monday, March 15, 2010
What a breakthrough!
I feel like the big brick wall I've been bashing my head against for so long has started to crumble. We had Jesse's weekly speech therapy appointment this morning. Jesse's SLP, M., was THRILLED with his progress! I took my Flip video camera with the video of Jesse talking in the bathtub from last night and showed her. So right away she tossed her plan for incorporating signs into his therapy and wants to dive right into increasing his vocabulary and getting him saying things spontaneously.
During the appointment she got him to say "eat" and "bus." He's also now saying "bye." I can hardly keep up! She gave me some tips for how to play with him and encourage spontaneous talking and new words. Such a productive 1/2 hour!
In other news:
We had our follow-up with the physiotherapist. She gave me some more information sheets on how to deal with the sensory issues. We have some proprioception work to do with him. She's pleased with his range of motion in his ankles, but thinks that he could tighten up if he continues to toe walk so much. She advised me to do some stretches with him and keep an eye on his range of motion. She'll keep his file open, so that if I need to, I can call her up and make an appointment and we can get Jesse right back in to see her without the
wait. She did think Occupational Therapy would be a good idea though, to help with the sensory issues, and I will be asking for a referral to OT at our appointment with Dr. C on Wednesday.
I also spoke with the social worker, J., this morning. We still don't know when we'll be assigned a senior therapist. It was supposed to be a 2-3 week wait. It's now been 4 weeks. And J. said that she "hopes" it'll only be "another week or so." So frustrating! I told her that this makes it REALLY difficult in terms of hiring a home therapist. They want someone hired by the next ABA training session (April 6-8). But how am I supposed to hire someone when I have no idea how many hours I'll be hiring someone for? I don't know if it'll be 15 hours, 20 hours, 30 hours? Something in between? Who would even be willing to take a job if they have no clue what kind of hours I can offer them? So I'm sort of at a loss as to what to do about that right now. I guess I just have to keep my fingers crossed that someone will get the lead out get moving on this.
I have to focus on the positive though, right? And I am. I'm going to work on Jesse's speech with him and do as much as I can. He's already come SO FAR in just the last couple of weeks. It's actually really exciting!
During the appointment she got him to say "eat" and "bus." He's also now saying "bye." I can hardly keep up! She gave me some tips for how to play with him and encourage spontaneous talking and new words. Such a productive 1/2 hour!
In other news:
We had our follow-up with the physiotherapist. She gave me some more information sheets on how to deal with the sensory issues. We have some proprioception work to do with him. She's pleased with his range of motion in his ankles, but thinks that he could tighten up if he continues to toe walk so much. She advised me to do some stretches with him and keep an eye on his range of motion. She'll keep his file open, so that if I need to, I can call her up and make an appointment and we can get Jesse right back in to see her without the
wait. She did think Occupational Therapy would be a good idea though, to help with the sensory issues, and I will be asking for a referral to OT at our appointment with Dr. C on Wednesday.
I also spoke with the social worker, J., this morning. We still don't know when we'll be assigned a senior therapist. It was supposed to be a 2-3 week wait. It's now been 4 weeks. And J. said that she "hopes" it'll only be "another week or so." So frustrating! I told her that this makes it REALLY difficult in terms of hiring a home therapist. They want someone hired by the next ABA training session (April 6-8). But how am I supposed to hire someone when I have no idea how many hours I'll be hiring someone for? I don't know if it'll be 15 hours, 20 hours, 30 hours? Something in between? Who would even be willing to take a job if they have no clue what kind of hours I can offer them? So I'm sort of at a loss as to what to do about that right now. I guess I just have to keep my fingers crossed that someone will get the lead out get moving on this.
I have to focus on the positive though, right? And I am. I'm going to work on Jesse's speech with him and do as much as I can. He's already come SO FAR in just the last couple of weeks. It's actually really exciting!
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