Tuesday, January 6, 2009

A hoot and holler

Little Bug has his first day back at school yesterday. My ears still hurt. It was as though all four children in attendance were communicating by meltdowns and echo-location only yesterday. I have never in all my life heard such noise.

They all had difficult moments- being all done, not tackling our friends, not throwing fire trucks at each other, and no eating the blue sand. With school, it normally seems like each child has an assigned bad day where everything is hard and they need extra help from the therapists and parents. But, they usually happen one at a time.

They all had hard days yesterday. I have a feeling that this was due to the extended break from school- two weeks planned and a week and a half unplanned.

Therapist A came over yesterday and it was great to see her and have her work with Little Bug again. She watched the videos we had made and was truly shocked. She was surprised to see Little Bug have such a hard time, but she did say we did a great job- we were even keeled, continued with the process of the task at hand regardless of the drama occurring. She had no criticism for our handling of the situation, but was surprised.

She asked us to continue video taping as she felt like she was really getting to see the whole picture. Again, we asked her if there was something we were doing to cause such a different behavior and she still feels that it is because she is still too novel with Little Bug.

We made a recap for her of the accomplishments and hardships from break and I would like to share them with you-
  1. Little Bug can now put on his own pants.
  2. He tried 4 new foods- including jello
  3. He has mastered the concept of 1- take 1 M&M, etc.
  4. Self injuring has decreased and changed to hitting himself rather than biting
  5. He is falling asleep by himself
  6. He is singing along with songs- in his own language

Now, here are the difficulties-

  1. Echolalia- he is repeating large portions of movies and what you say
  2. While meltdowns are becoming less frequent, they are much more intense.
  3. He has developed a sensitivity to having textures on his hands. This morning, running water on his hand made him scream and recoil.

One new difficulty for us and Little Bug is that he now is overly attached to me. Which is hard on Nick, because Little Bug screams when he tries to interact with him. Its also hard on Little Bug because I am the main worker of the home. If anyone has suggestions- other than backing up what Nick has told him, let us know, because this is pretty upsetting to everyone involved.

We also found out that we should begin speech therapy soon!

2 comments:

Kristy said...

Hey Blake,

Bryce went through a phase where he only wanted me to hold him. He'd absolutely freak if his dad or big sister tried to relieve me. I even had to set him in a small pool of water at the bottom of the bathtub while I took a shower, because I couldn't even be away that long. We quickly tired of this, and we just started doing the hand off. I would tell him I would be right back, hand him kicking and screaming to his dad. Dad would try and distract him with toys, a movie, a walk, and then when I did come back, I'd always make a huge point of saying "see? I told you I'd be back." And just constantly reassured him. He eventually grew out of that phase. I'm sure it will be much more difficult with Little Bug, but you can always give it ia shot!

Blake said...

Thanks for the idea Kristy! We really appreciate it. For Little Bug, it is getting to the point that when I am around, he screams if Nick touches or talks to him- even if I ignore Little Bug and give him no attention. When I leave, he's more okay with Nick.