Taking the Scenic Route

Although “Friendship Group” is a social skills group, they had an additional Social Skill playgroup that he was able to participate in this year.  It took place about 15 minutes after one of the Friendship group times, but was a bit bigger.  We got to see some other kids we have made friends with over the years that weren’t in his current FG, and that was neat.

He got a kick out of Twister

The helpers are wearing their kid’s schedule around their necks to help with transitions (and probably to avoid the glut of kids checking their schedules on a wall someplace).  Zane isn’t as dependent on a schedule as he used to be, but in a group this big it really helps him cope.

This group is a lot more challenging for him and he would have never been able to participate in it in previous years, just because of the amount of people, the more chaotic (not bad chaos, just the natural “get a bunch of kids in the same room” chaos) environment, and the sheer amount of activity.  He was able to focus and complete instructions successfully.  He is getting closer to being able to handle a classroom situation, but at this point it would take a lot of anxiety meds on board if he had to do it routinely.  Doing it in a more controlled environment goes a long ways towards teaching him how to manage himself in this type of setting.  (the project he is working on is decorating t-shirts for the staff & helpers)

I am glad I get another semester to get a better picture of him with his student ST (well, mostly I am glad we get another semester with the ST in general).  Sadly, this was the closest to “looking at the camera” + “pleasant facial expression” in the group of pictures I took. 

Zora spent the summer doing individual ST once a week, and participating in a Phonological Awareness Playgroup once a week.  The group had a theme each week based on a book (I think this weeks was “Blueberries for Sal”, thus the themed snack) which targeted various phonological awareness skills, and they reinforced skills they worked on in individual ST.  I think it was also a peer model/ST client mixture of kids.  Since these kids aren’t on the spectrum a camera is much more intrusive, so I waited until the last day and just got a few photos.

Well, I didn’t catch pictures of them in their session this time around, but here is the majority of the group of kids.  There were a total of eight kids, a combination of kids on the spectrum and peer models.  The oldest peer model (not pictured) gave a talk about this as her 4H project this year, which I thought was pretty cool.

The shirts were from a group picture they made, and each decorated the back of the shirt. If I remember right, his hand prints are the orange ones, near the “P”s.  Zane is surprisingly attached to this shirt.  I actually had to dig it out of the laundry to take a picture of it because he keeps grabbing it as soon as it is clean to wear it.

As I have said before, this summer we added a literacy & reading comprehension component to Zane’s therapy schedule.  It is a new venture, so we are all learning as we go, but I am quite pleased with how it is working out.  Since it is far more motivating for him if he is interested in the subject matter, we are using science as the backbone to build comprehension and vocabulary.  He has been creating a picture based vocabulary dictionary through the semester, as he learns new words, that is being used as a reference guide to teach him how to look things up if he doesn’t remember off the top of his head (word recall is difficult for him, even if he understands the concept). That is tied in to a science experiment that demonstrates the concept, requires reading and interpreting directions, plus writing out a brief description of the experiment (question being asked, hypothesis, ect) based on the scientific method.  She includes a lot of visual supports, as you can see in this picture.

Zane HATES writing.  At home we have to do the majority of scribing for him because he struggles with trying to do the mechanical process/motor planning involved with writing, especially when trying to create meaningful content.  I had to seperate the components out to get anything done on the majority of schoolwork, and continue to include Handwriting as a stand alone component to keep hitting the motor skills.  We are now trying to begin the process of integrating the two of them together by encouraging him to write himself instead of dictating and having us scribe.  To motivate him, he gets a marble if he completes the small writing task himself, and no marble if he asks for help.  At the end of the session, he gets to take all of the marbles earned and drop them in a marble run.

Notice I refrained from any comments on the “Zane’s Marbles” jar.  What restraint I have.

And, the last minute or two of the hour is spent with the marble run.  (most of the pictures of this were blurry because he was excited and flapping like a madman.  lol)

This summer we added a literacy component to Zane’s ST schedule, focusing on Reading Comprehension.  Since he loves science and doing science experiments, that is the vehicle we are using to help develop comprehension and writing skills.

This session’s experiment was putting Mentos into various kinds of soda pop to see which had the strongest reaction.  By the end of the experiment, he was wet and sticky from pop hitting him.  He kept licking himself. 

(photos from a combination of my cranky cell phone (first one), and the video the Clinical Educator is taking in this photo)

Zach took Zora to her last day of Preschool.  They were planting flowers and decorating the flowerpots for Mother’s Day.

She was very proud of her flowers.

It was a great year, with lots of growth, and I can’t wait until next fall when we can do it all again.

I am happy with the progress Zane made this year.  He is quite a bit more verbal, is learning to manage his emotions better (not perfect, but better), and he is just generally showing a lot of growth.  I am very proud of how hard he works and how far he has come.

Rosie did a really nice job with him this year.  She had the right amount of support and pushing him, something that can be challenging to manage.  We will miss her.  Here she is helping Zane get ready for his “Show and Share”.

They made play-do as a cooperative activity.  It smelled really yummy because Kool-aid was one of the ingredients.  Made me hungry.

And here is the whole crew (minus the Clinical Educator who dashed for her camera so she wouldn’t be in the photo.  stinker.)  If anybody in the group wants an unmodified photo, let me know.   This wasn’t the best shot of Zane, but the better shots of Zane were not a good shots for at least one of the adults each time, so I am posting this one instead.  We all know Zane’s head isn’t attached to the play-do bag.

Zora is saying good-bye to the student ST she has had all year, both at preschool and individual therapy.  Luckily, it won’t be a total good-bye for me because she will have Zane as a client this summer in a new literacy component we are planning on adding to his schedule.

She has done a fabulous job with Zora this year.  I was truly impressed.

At Zora’s conference I saw something I have never seen before in the stack of papers and testing.  She is actually improving, as in moving to a higher level of functioning on her speech abilities.  I am accustomed to making sure they are staying on their own unique learning curves (that they are gaining skills at a steady rate, trying not to stress that they aren’t following the ‘norms’), and after years of being used to seeing scores that tended to follow the same path, it was almost weird to see results that changed the severity level.

Granted, most parents probably aren’t tempted to start dancing when they see “Low Moderate” functioning, but I sure as heck was.   She is pulling herself higher, and I am SO proud of her.  This is what Early Intervention can do for Phonological delays (totally different set of issues than the Autism I am accustomed to dealing with.  Ironically, Zane scored at and above average for a lot of the phonological stuff that Zora struggles with so much). 

(blue was a year ago, brown is current tests.  It is a test where they evaluate how she pronounces words.)

Between the two kids, I am getting quite the education in communication disorders and speech therapy.  lol

Zane goes to a “Friendship Group” twice a week.  I snapped a few pictures this time.  They start the day with a “circle time” sort of thing where they greet each other and ask questions like “How are you today?”, with visual supports/PEC cards to ask and answer the questions.

They usually have a craft (often done cooperatively to develop communication and cooperation skills), a game (turn sharing and, in theory, how to win/lose gracefully…although the ‘gracefully’ part has a way to go, it is MUCH improved), a “show and share”  (usually a toy, but this day Zane brought the book “Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus”), and some sort of special activity.

About the hair.  Zane refuses to cut his hair.  He has always hated both the process of cutting hair and having short hair.  In the last few months I noticed that he was starting to approximate eye contact behind the bangs, and knowing how he feels about cutting his hair it occurred to me that maybe he doesn’t like short hair because it doesn’t provide the sensory screen that long hair does.  I waited until I felt like he had developed the habit of initial eye contact/visual referencing (not sustained eye contact, just letting people know he is talking to/listening to them), because I didn’t want to mess with that, but finally I couldn’t take it any more and started putting his hair into a ponytail to get it out of his face during ST.  (I actually came into the room one time and pulled the holder out of my hair and put it in his when I just couldn’t take it one more minute.  He was pulling his hair purposely in front of his face that day and it was causing issues, and I had made him start putting into a ponytail the week before for swimming.)  From that point on, when he has either ST (because they need to see his face) or swimming (because of my own experience of coming out of the water with a wall of hair suffocating me so I know that it can be panic inducing, even with an experienced swimmer) he has to let his hair be pulled back unless he agrees to cut it.  He is allowed to pull the ponytail out as soon as those things are done (and he usually does almost immediately).  It is a comfortable truce for both of us.

The only down side is that boys do not have long hair in this part of the country, and you can imagine how on top of things the STs had to be to keep the comments to a minimum with a group of boys who don’t have a polite filter.  lol.  Right now I am just waiting for the hair to grow just a little more so the ponytail looks a little more boyish and lower on his head.

Ready to leave