Our Early Intervention Progress
So a while ago I had mentioned that Ceej was in developmental and speech therapy through Early Intervention. I am so happy to report that after about 3 months of therapies he has made HUGE strides. Seriously - we say to each other everyday "when did he grow up." It's amazing to see your child thrive and learn.
Many people have asked me what therapy is like and the answer is it's basically structured play. We have developmental therapy on Tuesday afternoons and his therapist brings lots of toys and they sit in the floor and play together. She also works a lot with him and getting him to use words. This week they played with play dough on a mat, built towers with blocks, put little animal pegs into holes in a farm and blew bubbles. At the end when his therapist writes her note he gets to play a few games on her ipad and I highly recommend anything from Tiny Hands. We have them on our personal ipad as well and they are great tools for helping kiddos learn colors, sorting, shapes, etc. Miss Ilana - his DT - definitely thinks he's made great strides. His focus has improved tremendously and we've went from chasing him around the house just to get him to sit for 35 minutes of the hour session to telling him all done - time to go - and having him be sad it's over.
On Friday afternoons we have speech therapy and Miss Veronica his speech therapist is a saint. She is truly awesome and she has gotten our little man communicating with us, trying new words, and parroting like a champ!! Again, her therapy looks a lot like play but focusing on using words and signs throughout. For instance bubbles are Ceej's favorite so she will blow bubbles with him and we work on words like "more", "Please', "bubbles", and "pop." We are not only trying to get increase his vocabulary but also get him to "parrot" or repeat more. We do animal sounds and he's now started saying "meow" when he sees a cat vs just saying cat - but great progress none the less. We've also worked on overall communication with the choice board so if casey is getting upset because he's trying to communicate with us but can't - we will pull out the choice board and it normally takes care of it. It's interesting - we can communicate very well now even though he has only a few words.
Our biggest wins lately speech wise have been his saying "all done" whenever he's done with anything, asking to open or close things (always the blinds), and asking for lights to be on and off. I know it sounds silly, easy and trivial but for us it's huge. When they tell you your child is 8-10 months behind his peers and he starts communicating and picking things up it literally is the most amazing thing in the world. Tonight I was giving Ceej his bath and he decided he was done and stood up and said "all done" - silly but it brought tears to my eyes.
After some behaviors that Casey was demonstrating both his DT and speech therapist mentioned we might want to get him evaluated for occupational therapy. We did and we had a "picture perfect" evaluation - meaning all of the things I was worried about he demonstrated in the hour long evaluation - getting upset and throwing toys, standing in the middle of the floor and screaming and shaking because he was frustrated, biting his own hand out of frustration, hitting Max with a soft toy and the icing on the cake? Hitting me in the face because he was so upset. When he does this you can see that he's frustrated that he can't communicate and he doesn't know how to process it or get it out so it manifests in bad behavior. It's so so hard and honestly it's very taxing on me because I know in my head he can't help it but man it can be such a challenge to stay calm and patient with him. We have our OT add on meeting next week and will then be able to start scheduling therapy and I just can't wait. I've heard OT's are miracle workers so I'm excited to see how much further he can come!
As you all know I'm an open book - with everything - so please please please - if you have any questions about EI, the process- anything - don't hesitate to ask. We are so very thoughtful for the program and what it's done for our family and would recommend it to anyone!!
XOXO
K
Many people have asked me what therapy is like and the answer is it's basically structured play. We have developmental therapy on Tuesday afternoons and his therapist brings lots of toys and they sit in the floor and play together. She also works a lot with him and getting him to use words. This week they played with play dough on a mat, built towers with blocks, put little animal pegs into holes in a farm and blew bubbles. At the end when his therapist writes her note he gets to play a few games on her ipad and I highly recommend anything from Tiny Hands. We have them on our personal ipad as well and they are great tools for helping kiddos learn colors, sorting, shapes, etc. Miss Ilana - his DT - definitely thinks he's made great strides. His focus has improved tremendously and we've went from chasing him around the house just to get him to sit for 35 minutes of the hour session to telling him all done - time to go - and having him be sad it's over.
On Friday afternoons we have speech therapy and Miss Veronica his speech therapist is a saint. She is truly awesome and she has gotten our little man communicating with us, trying new words, and parroting like a champ!! Again, her therapy looks a lot like play but focusing on using words and signs throughout. For instance bubbles are Ceej's favorite so she will blow bubbles with him and we work on words like "more", "Please', "bubbles", and "pop." We are not only trying to get increase his vocabulary but also get him to "parrot" or repeat more. We do animal sounds and he's now started saying "meow" when he sees a cat vs just saying cat - but great progress none the less. We've also worked on overall communication with the choice board so if casey is getting upset because he's trying to communicate with us but can't - we will pull out the choice board and it normally takes care of it. It's interesting - we can communicate very well now even though he has only a few words.
Our biggest wins lately speech wise have been his saying "all done" whenever he's done with anything, asking to open or close things (always the blinds), and asking for lights to be on and off. I know it sounds silly, easy and trivial but for us it's huge. When they tell you your child is 8-10 months behind his peers and he starts communicating and picking things up it literally is the most amazing thing in the world. Tonight I was giving Ceej his bath and he decided he was done and stood up and said "all done" - silly but it brought tears to my eyes.
After some behaviors that Casey was demonstrating both his DT and speech therapist mentioned we might want to get him evaluated for occupational therapy. We did and we had a "picture perfect" evaluation - meaning all of the things I was worried about he demonstrated in the hour long evaluation - getting upset and throwing toys, standing in the middle of the floor and screaming and shaking because he was frustrated, biting his own hand out of frustration, hitting Max with a soft toy and the icing on the cake? Hitting me in the face because he was so upset. When he does this you can see that he's frustrated that he can't communicate and he doesn't know how to process it or get it out so it manifests in bad behavior. It's so so hard and honestly it's very taxing on me because I know in my head he can't help it but man it can be such a challenge to stay calm and patient with him. We have our OT add on meeting next week and will then be able to start scheduling therapy and I just can't wait. I've heard OT's are miracle workers so I'm excited to see how much further he can come!
As you all know I'm an open book - with everything - so please please please - if you have any questions about EI, the process- anything - don't hesitate to ask. We are so very thoughtful for the program and what it's done for our family and would recommend it to anyone!!
XOXO
K
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