Documenting John's week

The last week was a big week for John. Although the flu went around the family (except for me), and we had some "over stimulated" evenings and mealtimes out, John has progressed visibly this last week.

First of all, his language has really come a long way.
3 speech milestones for John:

1. He said "I want granola bar" with no prompting -

• "I want" has been a speech therapy goal
• He went into the kitchen while playing and called me; then saying "I want granola bar"
• Now, "Granola" was a mouthful and "bar" was more like "ba", but I understood it.
  

2. He is answering questions with "Yes" and "No"

• I started playing a game with him to help him understand "Yes and No" because he never would use it so we weren't sure if he had the concept or not
• I would ask him in the parking lot "Is this mommy's car?" I would point to different cars and say "no" and then finally to mine, saying "yes". For about 1-2 weeks he's been playing along with me, saying it.
• A few days ago, I asked him if he wanted play-dough and he said "yes" --- first time he really used "yes" in answer to a question; I used to get grunts, squeals, happy screams of delight, and grabbing, but no language for "yes", so this was a big deal!
  

3. He wanted an "apple bah" for breakfast, which is an apple juice box, but I was out and told him I had to buy more at the store. We then went to school, lunch, napped, back to school for speech, and then a neurofeedback session. I called Bill on the way home and told him I was stopping at the grocery store to buy something for dinner. When I got off the phone John said "sto. Buy apple bah". I was excited that he was able to relate 'store' to buying the apple juice boxes, as well remembering from that morning!

John also has "pooped" in the "potty seat" all week long! He has discovered that he enjoys "passing gas" while sitting on the toilet, and he gets a sticker if he actually poops in the toilet, so he spent the week collecting his stickers. I am very very close to saying that he is fully potty trained. Although, going to the bathroom and "wash ands" is becoming an obsession, I am pretty excited to have gotten through this milestone with such little problems.

Today, something else happened -- twice. I was reading about sensory children who need their muscles 'squeezed' or crave bear hugs. One mother talked about her experiences of squeezing her child's muscles before going to sleep. The book also talked about using pillows to 'sandwich' the child who likes to be bear hugged, etc.

I needed John to take his nap between speech and the in-home teacher arriving. He was so wound-up that I wasn't sure he was going to settle down in time to get an hour nap in. I remembered what I read. So, I started with his hands. I squeezed them. He closed his eyes and smiled. I moved up his arms, squeezing firmly. He rolled onto his stomach on his own, so I started at his feet and began firmly squeezing his muscles. He moaned slightly, but seemed to relax. I grabbed a pillow and placed it on his back. I pressed down on the pillow, starting at his legs. By the time I got to his lower back, he was asleep. It took a matter of 2-3 minutes!
I tried it again at bedtime, and WOW---same thing.

I'd say in a week, John's language grew, he became potty trained, and bedtime has just got easier! Let's see if this can continue....

EDIT: I wanted to add a few more things now that I have some more time.
John has had 5 neurofeedback sessions since last week. We brought his favorite movies to watch and they incorporate it into the brain training. He sits still for them and enjoys his time there and the process still intrigues me. He has 4 more left of the initial 10 free sessions we received.

At pre-school on Monday, John was able to string 6 beads and attend very well to the tasks he was asked to do. He was not interested in riding the tricycle or practicing jumping at school, but once he got home, he bounced in the bounce house, showing me he can jump.

Yesterday, he worked with Marilyn in speech and she is working on his eye contact. She played peek-a-boo on his lead and she makes sure he looks at her when he says "go" before she allows him to jump in the ball pit, play with cars, etc. (get any of his speech rewards). She uses tokens to show him how many words he needs to say before he gets his 'reward'. He picks his 'reward' from a picture. Yesterday, he picked the ball pit. He loves to hang from the trapeze bar and swing before falling in the pit of balls.

Today, he worked with Tonyia in speech and she is helping him with verbalizing what he wants. He couldn't tolerate the swing today and was not as interested in the ball pit as he was yesterday. He played on the computer, recognizing action verbs. He is able to use the mouse and point to the picture, clicking the one the computer asks him for. Tonyia then tried to get him to recognize audio sounds and then click a picture from 9 choices of what he heard. This was a little harder, as he didn't always concentrate on what he was hearing and would pick any picture.

We are limiting his in-home hours to 5 hours a week, instead of 8, since we will be beginning OT/SI soon and I felt like I could do some of the in-home stuff myself.

Over the last 2 weeks, Bill and I have integrated "circle time" into our bedtime ritual. After bath and brushing our teeth, we now sit down, with 5-6 'props' in the center. Each kid can choose a song to sing, using the props as guides (bus for "wheels on the bus", star wand for "twinkle twinkle", toy boat for "row row your boat", and pom poms for "shake your sillies out", drums for "boom boom", and a spider for "itsy bitsy spider"). Normally, John will play along, but not always sing all the words out loud, piping in here and there. Tonight, John was very vocal in every song and fully participated in ALL of the songs.

At Church on Sunday, John said the "our father" with everyone, out loud. It is neat to hear his language developing. After "circle time", we have prayer time. We start with the sign of the cross, then go into the "our father" and then each of us says our own "Dear Jesus" prayer. Katie's is very dramatic, heartfelt, and oftentimes very long (sometimes we have to jump in and remind her with "amen"). John has always said a "Dear Jesus" prayer, but we weren't sure what he was saying. Over the last week, it's been so cute to hear his little words thanking Jesus for his "momen" and his "daden" and "kayden". (Mommy, Daddy, and Katie) He prays for Katie's school and John's school, and he always smiles after he says "aden" (amen).

I can't tell you how neat it is to hear and understand the words coming out of his mouth.