Brag Day!

[cam]

I almost didn't notice that I hadn't hit the "g" enough in the title. "Bra Day" would have been interesting too...

Anyway, let's hear those brags!

LO was helping me measure stuff and is finally reading numbers left to right instead right to left (above ten, he reads off the numbers by digit, such as "three five" for 35). I have been correcting that for several months with zero impact other than in the moment, but it just clicked that day after the first couple of reminders, and he now is fairly consistent in going left to right.

When a dog whines, LO points it out and tries to figure out what she wants (he checks their dishes, asks if they want to go outside or to play, etc). Still has a long ways to go to understanding they have their own desires in terms of wanting to take a break from playing, wanting to take a nap, not wanting to eat or drink when he thinks they should, etc, but it is progress.

[triplea598]

DS is pretty much walking now! The only thing in his way now is just fear. He'd taken about 10 steps unassisted though.

[litebright]

We had DD1's IEP meeting this morning. Her teacher at one point called her "a model first grader"!!!

And can I just love on our school a little more? We noticed in the draft that was sent home that they were recommending a significant increase in her service minutes. Not because she's doing poorly, it turns out, but because they're hiring an SLP whose focus & experience is in communication for kids on the spectrum and they want DD1 to have a good bit of time with her, figuring that beefing that up now will get her even closer to being off an IEP altogether by middle school. It's still only 30 minutes/week, so not enough to disrupt classroom time, but definitely a bump up in services that we didn't even have to request, they just know the new resource is coming and think it's a good fit for DD1's needs. They've always had SLPs at the school, obviously, but they are more generalists; DD1 hasn't done much work with them at the elementary level because her language is technically okay if quirky. They're really hoping that working with two different ASD experts (SLP and the school psych) on ToM, perspective taking and communication will help her make even faster progress.

And the SLP they're hiring at the elementary level? Is the same one who serves the preschool, so she already knows (and loves) DD1 and has been the source of some very good advice over the past few years. She is very sharp, very honest and I have a great deal of trust in her judgment. I think it's going work out SO well and I'm frankly thrilled.

[akafred]

Monday Char had a great day! She got to make a cool dragon in the kindergarten group, and did her whole work plan (which included stuff she didn't like), and did some great work in aftercare too. At night she read a 64 page book really well, and not an easy one. For ages she has been convinced 32 page books were her limit, so this is great! Sometimes I can get her to read longer books but not usually.

[dixienormous]

PF INSISTED on walking all over the mall on sunday. She wanted nothing to do with her stroller. She had Daddy's finger in one hand and Elmo in the other and only went down 3 times!

[numbbears]

DS has two more words making a total of four words now!

If you ask him what a cow says, he'll say "moo" and what a sheep says "baa." Thanks to the "Moo, Baa, La La La" book.

He actually had these words a while back last year, but lost them. Hopefully these stay around this time.

[KC thepouchh8r]

So the bus gets here to take dd to school this morning. I was on the fence about sending her because it had been snowing for the last few hours. The bus driver tells me the roads are terrible and I shouldn't drive. Since I pick up dd from school I decide to keep her home. I tell her we aren't going to school today while she's already in her seat ready to go. I fully expect at that point I will have to carry her off the bus in full meltdown mode. Instead she says ok, gets up, says bye see you tomorrow to the aide/driver and walks off no problem. I about died of shock. Should probably get her a pony.

[namastebiotches]

Yesterday, the preschool had an invite to parents to come to the class & read. Before that, they did their morning routine of this song 'going on a bear hunt' with hand/body movements.
He did everything! Some examples were running in place, doing a hand thing for rain, just moving all over the place.
Our back story is that when he started preschool, the co-teacher/early interventionist had to manually maneuver him to participate. He just wasn't having it.
When we went to the second parent teacher conference just in January, she told us that he was finally participating so seeing him do the things & have so much fun nearly brought me to tears.

[namastebiotches]

Oh & then the rest of time, he was pretty much ignoring me. It was kind of funny, he was totally in his element so long story short, he never came over to me to have me read to him.
So school ends, we come home, I put him down for a nap. He starts crying. I go in there, ask him what's wrong.
'Mama ree book my shool?'
He felt guilty?! So freaking cute. I consoled him & told him it was alright & I'd read to him later. Later came.. he wasn't interested. Lol

[junebug060609]

Little late to the party, but DS had a good one yesterday.

During ABA therapy he did a small jigsaw puzzle on the ipad completely on his own! Therapist got a video of it (I was in other room with sister) and it was awesome. Best part was how proud he was when he finished. YAY!!!

[funchicken]

DD1 has become such a sane and reasonable creature over the past six months. She still has her moments, but I feel like I can actually appeal to her sense of reason in a lot of situations where in the past that would not have been the case.

Here's an example: the girls wanted to go sledding with their friends. They don't have snow pants because we live in VA, but I told them they needed to wear two pairs of pants to stay warm. DD1 (6.5) got herself totally ready to go including double-pants and hung out by the front door waiting for me to get DD2 (4) ready. It took me at least 20 minutes to get a sobbing, whining DD2 to put on appropriate winter attire. And of course she only stayed outside for 10 minutes...sigh.

I can't wait for DD2 to achieve some measure of sanity in a couple of years

[macchiatto]

Leo has been blowing me away with his reading lately. He's just come so far in the past 2 months.

I also caught him actually pulling his pants up unprompted a few times in the past week (if anyone remembers my pants post), so progress there! When I was talking to his SLP when she redid goals recently, I half-jokingly mentioned the pants thing saying he needs help becoming aware of social norms like keeping your pants up and since her focus with him is on social skills and she's awesome, she was actually willing to add that to his goals. It includes developing awareness of when he has food on his hands and face, stuff like that, as well. She seems to have a magic touch with him; he's made impressive progress with each of the goals they've worked on.

[Life is interesting]

Mar 4, 2015 12:08:35 GMT -5 cam said:

I almost didn't notice that I hadn't hit the "g" enough in the title. "Bra Day" would have been interesting too...

Anyway, let's hear those brags!

LO was helping me measure stuff and is finally reading numbers left to right instead right to left (above ten, he reads off the numbers by digit, such as "three five" for 35). I have been correcting that for several months with zero impact other than in the moment, but it just clicked that day after the first couple of reminders, and he now is fairly consistent in going left to right.

When a dog whines, LO points it out and tries to figure out what she wants (he checks their dishes, asks if they want to go outside or to play, etc). Still has a long ways to go to understanding they have their own desires in terms of wanting to take a break from playing, wanting to take a nap, not wanting to eat or drink when he thinks they should, etc, but it is progress.

I can't figure out how to determine how to reply to threads without quoting. Help?

My brag: DS was at DD open house tonight for school. He was at the play kitchen and pretended to drink, eat and use condiments for the hot dog and we don't really even eat hot dogs. He pretended! Correctly!
DS just had a re-eval for his therapy place ( which is another story I'm annoyed about and cost a zillion dollars but I digress) and that was one of the questions does he pretend and I said no. Well I was wrong! I think I don't always notice and am truly shocked at how far he has come. Oh another brag, DDs teacher who DS has never met called his name and he turned to look at her immediately. Exciting!

DD loved showing us her "big girl school" tonight at open house, was so much fun and can't believe we are there and that K starts in 5 months!

[olivegoose]

I picked up DD from preschool on Thursday and the first thing she does is tell me about how she and her friend got into a fight over a toy. She told me all the details of their fight, how she hit her friend, what the teachers did, and how she and her friend made up. Not necessarily good news, and I'm still irritated that her teacher didn't tell me about it, but I am really proud that she was honest with me.

[anintrovert]

DS just completed his fourth week at his new school. It's been going wonderfully. He had one blip in behavior two weeks ago that wasn't nearly as intense as it was at his old school and that's it. He even had a sub last week for 3 days. He was fine. He got his report card yesterday and I cried. I'm not a crier but all social emotional categories were Effectively Demonstrates or Making Progress. His last report card at his last school had a few Not Demonstrated. In the notes section his new teacher wrote "It has been a great pleasure to have him in class" He's right at Meeting Standard for the Academic piece. Per his IEP progress report he's at benchmark in reading for the end of Kindergarten.

He's learning the other kids names and starting to branch out from the kid he latched on to in the beginning. Several parents stay and let the kids play after school. Yesterday his friend had to leave early and his other friend wasn't there either. After a little bit he went and joined the group of boys who were still there.

I know we still need to reopen the IEP and we might still be in a bit of a honeymoon period but it's going great. My kid is coming home happy and he's excited about school for the first time since early October. I am so much more confident in the ability of this school to handle the behaviors in an appropriate manner. The feeling at the school is one of inclusion. I am so happy we moved.

and litebright, the SLP sounds amazing. I suspect DS will get his Speech minutes back when we reconvene the IEP. I'm going to send an email about setting up the meeting next week.

[litebright]

Mar 7, 2015 14:44:08 GMT -5 anintrovert said:

DS just completed his fourth week at his new school. It's been going wonderfully. He had one blip in behavior two weeks ago that wasn't nearly as intense as it was at his old school and that's it. He even had a sub last week for 3 days. He was fine. He got his report card yesterday and I cried. I'm not a crier but all social emotional categories were Effectively Demonstrates or Making Progress. His last report card at his last school had a few Not Demonstrated. In the notes section his new teacher wrote "It has been a great pleasure to have him in class" He's right at Meeting Standard for the Academic piece. Per his IEP progress report he's at benchmark in reading for the end of Kindergarten.

He's learning the other kids names and starting to branch out from the kid he latched on to in the beginning. Several parents stay and let the kids play after school. Yesterday his friend had to leave early and his other friend wasn't there either. After a little bit he went and joined the group of boys who were still there.

I know we still need to reopen the IEP and we might still be in a bit of a honeymoon period but it's going great. My kid is coming home happy and he's excited about school for the first time since early October. I am so much more confident in the ability of this school to handle the behaviors in an appropriate manner. The feeling at the school is one of inclusion. I am so happy we moved.

and litebright, the SLP sounds amazing. I suspect DS will get his Speech minutes back when we reconvene the IEP. I'm going to send an email about setting up the meeting next week.

I am so, so glad to hear how well it's been going! That's just awesome. Fingers crossed that the honeymoon period is actually your/his new normal.