Monday Speech...

Totally forgot to update about speech yesterday!

So Cindy said she was really pleased with how well J is handling school. Now that we have caught onto his affinity for routine and pictures to anticipate what's next, she encouraged me to just keep working with that. Her only other specific input about school was to discourage others from caving to him at his first squawk of dissatisfaction. when he's not using words. For example, the day she was there, he was playing with the fence pieces to the barn and one of his classmates came by and grabbed one. The mom immediately took it from the little girl and gave it back to him, which I think, is what most moms would do in that situation. I'm supposed to try to intervene and not let them give it back until he uses words to address what's wrong. That will be exhausting, but all things with good rewards are.

Her only other observations were the aforementioned issues with his coordination. She brought this funky inflated pillow thing for him to sit on yesterday and makes him adjust his balance to stay sitting up. (I tried it and it's quite the challenge!) I agreed to her bringing in an occupational therapist to help us set up a "sensory diet" (jargon alert!) which will basically be a toddler obstacle course. So yeah, our house is going to be toddler heaven for awhile, I'm thinking.

Interestingly, I was reading through the handouts she left us yesterday and there are apparently two types of sensory integration issues kids can have -- either overly sensitive to things or not sensitive enough to things. It seems I had one of each in Ben and Jonathan! Reading through the list of overly sensitive kid issues, Ben had almost every single one at J's age. Jonathan, on the other hand, lacks a sense of his body's place in space, so to speak, which makes him clumsy. He doesn't even seem to feel pain the way average people do in that, he will NOT cry when he gets hurt unless he gets REALLY hurt. Anyway, all just interesting stuff.  (I'm realizing I may have missed yet another calling in life as I am sort of envying Miss Cindy's job these days!)

She's also helping us put together a book with pictures of everything he uses, asks for and needs on a regular basis. He uses words to ask for things specifically now which is great,  but this has something to do with helping solidify the idea in his head of getting someone's attention to ask for something specific rather than just randomly yelling it into the air without initiating a conversation with someone. So I'm slaving away on collecting pictures of everything in his life and we'll eventually categorize it and put everything on velcro in this little binder thing. :)

Also, I'm thinking I need to invest in my own personal laminating machine. LOL. Sheesh.

So that's that. Today was a relatively good day at school which only some mild transition issues. He got to ride bikes int he big room and he was SO happy!!! I love school.... :)