Looking back at our goals

Recently I was reading my early blog post and found our goals for our Little Bug.  Here they are from September of 2008-

1.    Get Little Bug to go to sleep without a fight- whether this means giving up naps, changing work schedules or a weighted blanket, we have yet to discover.

•  Beef up his sensory diet with daily activities that help him regulate his sensory system
• Continue down our road of learning sign language with him. A little background on his speech, previously, his max speech capacity was 10 words. Some- like da, ma, away- for airplane, wuwu- for train, were constants. Others, like down, up, couch, sit- they would come and stay a while. Then like nomadic words, pack up their things and leave. Since beginning sign language, he now has 19 words- constant words that stay and build homes- and almost 20 signs- that currently have long term leases and we are hoping that they will buy the property.
•  Prevent self-injuring behavior- like biting and head banging.
• Help him realize and reach his full potential through realistic challenges.

I wanted to check in on each one


1.  Sleep.  Little Bug now goes to sleep by himself.  We read him a book, carry him to his bed, tuck him in and give him love.  Then off to dreamland- for a little while.  He doesn’t sleep through the night always and often wakes and comes to our bed- usually two to three times a week.  Little Bug is also not nighttime potty trained and at times has accidents that cause him to wake.


2.  Sensory diet.  This has been achieved.  We have things for all the inputs- from spinning and swinging for vestibular to jumping and blanket for proprioceptive.  We have chewies and snacks for oral stimming and have made sure that the clothes and blankets are of the sensory friendly type


3.  Sign language.  This goal has been blown out of the water.  Little Bug not only tackled sign language but now has tackled English.  That is to say, he never stops talking. Ever.  Even when sleeping- still talking.  With speech comes different challenges.  He has echolalia.  Commercials are a favorite of his.  He will grab a tag line and repeat it to the point of craziness.  He also gets “stuck” on snippets of songs. For example, he will sing two lines of the Itsy Bitsy Spider over and over and over.  He also takes thing incredibly literally. Needless to say, this can make things very challenging


4.   Self-injuring.  Although this has decreased, it still occurs during stress as well as part of stimming.  For example, he will sit on the couch and repeated hit himself in the face with an open hand while he watches TV.  He also has begun to bite himself and others again as part of a way to release stress when he is frustrated or angry.  He bit me the other day hard enough to break the skin through my jeans


5.   Help him realize his full potential- we will never stop challenging him or growing with him.

Now our new goals


1.  Quality sleep- sleeping through the night consistently
2.  Finding positive outlet for self-injuring stimming behavior.
3.  Through play dates, organized activities through our local children’s museum as well as zoo camps, ensure that Little Bug has multiple social skills oriented opportunities outside of school.
4.   Helping Little Bug to be more independent.  He no longer wants to be watched by people outside the family and clings to Nick and I. We need to challenge him in order to get over this fear and ensure that he can be cared for by someone other than us.
5.   Safety awareness.  Because of his sensory integration disorder as well as “mind blindness” that is common with people on the spectrum, we need to work with him even harder to get him to understand safety challenges and
6  Help him realize his full potential- we will never stop challenging him or growing with him.

Catching up

That is what we were told yesterday about Little Bug- he is catching up developmentally and in a lot of areas will be completely caught up by the time he is three. Therapist A, who spends the most time with him, says that he has shown tremendous progress and at times believes that perceived cognitive delays are due to how information is asked for or presented and not whether he is retaining it.

She did state that in certain areas- like speech and social development- he is still significantly delayed. She also said that for memory and problem solving he is advanced.

We wrote his new goals yesterday-

1. Two word sentences. Waiting him out and prompting him with sign will be our technique.
2. Descriptive words. I don't get this one as he has two descriptive words in speech- EWW and Hot- and several in sign only.
3. Colors and Shapes. He can match like nobody's business and knows his colors. If you ask him to point to the blue whatever though, no dice. Same with shapes- line up three and he can't find the circle if you ask for it. But he can recognize the difference, again when matching, between a parallelogram, square, rectangle, and rhombus. Same with oval and circle.
4. On, under, etc. If you tell him to look under x, he wanders around and doesn't seem to understand these words.
5. Part, Purpose, and Category
6. Yes and No. For example, holding a dog and saying, "Is this a cat?". Also, more concretely, answering questions. If you ask, do you want a cookie, he will say no and then cry when you don't give it to him. If you were to ask, do you want to eat the cookie, then it would have been a yes.
7. Flexibility. Encouraging this more in play and speech as he is very routinized.
8. Eye contact

I am so proud of all the work he has done. It shows every day.

In other news, and probably more importantly to Little Bug, he has new SHARKKKKS (he develops a lateral lisp whenever he says it). We went to visit some good friends and they got him a 24 piece fish jigsaw puzzle, a shark pillow and blanket. He carries the pillow with him yelling MY SHARKKKKS and wants to sleep under the blanket. We figured the puzzle would take him a couple of weeks to figure out, but he can do 20 of the 24 pieces by himself, so probably not.

Pizza, Candy, and Rootbeer- OH MY!

So last night, Little Bug must have thought the he went to heaven because he had vegetarian pizza for dinner, a few sips of rootbeer, and more gummi worms, etc. than I care to admit. He did really well at the play therapy yesterday and this was sort of a treat. For all those concerned about associating foods with emotions- get over it. Last week, his treat was getting to visit the fish at Pets Mart.

The person who did our intake and did a very bad job at our meeting with Birth to Three was his substitute teacher yesterday. She was amazed at how much eye contact he was making and that he had over thirty signs.

DN and I reviewed his goals and have lots of feedback for his Autism teacher on Monday, so that should be a great meeting. it will be here at the house. This was one of Birth to Three's strokes of genius- have therapies both in home and at center so that children develop skills that are not specific to a location, but to a behaviour. Often time, kiddos with ASD will develop scripted behaviour based on a location and are unable to easily translate that skill to another location. For example, a child may learn how to appropriately self soothe in the classroom environment, but be unable to do so at home as they do not have the correct script in place for that behaviour. By mirroring the therapies at home and center, this will create a ton of consistency for Little Bug and provide him with skills that follow him through life. This is a huge and incredibly important challenge. We aren't just talking playing games and teaching manners, we are talking about providing him the skills to be a independent functioning member of society.

Well, time to get in the deep end of the pool. But first, I would like to leave you with a song that I absolutely love:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OF9UB_xrhMI&feature=related

One step forward, Two steps back

So the wonderful speech therapist our FRC found is not covered by our insurance and we simply cannot afford to pay for it out of pocket. It breaks my heart that Little Bug's learning is based on how much we make.

Someone suggested that we look into Disability for Little Bug to cover the cost of therapy. We did their online survey and we make too much money. Talk about a rock and a hard place. I imagine this is the theme for a lot of families dealing with Autism.

We received his goals for Play Therapy and they are quite lofty. It makes my heart race to think how we are going to help him accomplish this. He is a brilliant kid and I know that he can do it.