We finally did it. After reading suggestions since before his diagnosis to keep a behavior diary, at 4 1/2, months after we halted OT, after starting school, after maturing and growing, we finally did it. I busted out an excel spreadsheet, tucked the pages into a report cover, and hung a pen on the side.
We scribbled in the car, after he was in bed, at the dinner table. I wrote down when he hit me, and when he just shouted instead. We jotted down what he ate, and how much, except for his school meals, since we don’t see him there. I nagged poor husband to fill out what went on while I was at work. He sighed, scribbled, sighed some more.
And finally it was done. I set it aside for a few days, and Monday afternoon, bed bound by my cleaning frenzy of the morning, I read it all. Soon we’ll take what we learned and see what we can shift in our lives to help calm, support, and treat our son. This is what we found:
…continue reading
We recently had our son’s IEP meeting. We are, from what I can tell from other stories I hear, very rare in our experiences. Our IEP meetings have always been friendly and upbeat. You can feel how much his teachers and therapists love him and only want to set him up for success. A story from his IEP got me to thinking. First… the story.
At our IEP meeting his teacher leaned over and said “OMG, I have to tell you this story about Dylan. Not only does he recognize his own sensory needs but can now spot them in the younger kids”. Dylan is in a self-contained classroom that runs Kindergarten through second grade. “Just the other day he said “Mrs. W. Pablo is driving me nuts! He needs my vest!” With that he went over to his compression vest, took it off the hook and put it on the younger boy who immediately settled down. I heard this story and was, as you can imagine, beaming with pride. Then I realized that it wasn’t something that just happened. It was years and years and years of work on my son’s part, with his OT, that brought him to this point. …continue reading
