Social Skills Group, Speech Therapy

Joseph went to his first session in a social skills group run by Children's Hospital this afternoon. It's facilitated by an occupational therapist and a speech therapist. I didn't get to observe the session, but it was Joseph and two other boys. The other two were pretty sedate, particularly compared to my little ball of chaos. Joseph apparently really enjoyed it. They were impressed that he drew a face on these little foam pumpkins the kids decorated. He even drew triangles for the eyes. :) They also said they heard him speak in complete sentences. Which is news to me, I've still only heard him do that once. I sometimes think he's holding out on me, though I can't imagine why.

The social skills group meets during his previous speech therapy time. We can move speech, but I think we might take a break from it for a while. We're having trouble getting our house reorganized how it needs to be for PECS to work. Joseph has too much access to everything, and most things, if he can't get us to get it for him, he will get it himself. In order to make him use the PECS cards (or talk, for that matter) he needs to be forced to ask us for things. Why talk when you can scale the cabinets and get your own banana? Which he can, and does.

Saturday, Kristy and I are going to leave the kids with Celia and go to a support group meeting in Hilliard. It will be nice for us to do something together without the kids, even if the activity itself is defined by Joseph and his disorder.

E-mail from School

From: Lxxxx Xxxxx [mailto:xxxxx@dublinschools.net]
Sent: Thursday, September 02, 2010 4:33 PM
To: joseph.harris@xxxxx.net; kristy@xxxxx.net
Subject: library

Hi!

I wanted to let you know that Joseph really enjoyed going to the school library yesterday & listening to Mr. P read a story...he sat on my lap and looked at the television (the book was projected onto the tv screen 7 watched Mr. P (he's very animated) and laughed. At one point, the looked over at the friend that was sitting next to him and gently brushed her hair, then lean over and gave her a big hug and a smooch on the cheek :-)

[I received some smooches on the cheek today too :-)]

Next week, we'll be able to check out books (the kids weren't in the computer system yet so we couldn't do it this week).

He participated much more during circle today...let us help him do the hand motions to the songs - got some good eye contact during this too! He was also excited to put his name card up on the board for "Who is here today?" He also sat and looked through several books with me and repeated (verbally) many of the pictures we were pointing out on the pages. In his backpack is the art we've been working on of all his friends at school (their pictures & names) -he was repeating their names with me today...might be fun to hang up somewhere at home and continue to refer to it....he seems to be developing more interest in his peers....

Great first week! Joseph should be super proud of himself!! I know we're excited!

Have a great weekend!!

Lxxxxx

At the Park

Today was Joseph's sister Maria's first day of Kindergarten, so after the bus picked her up this afternoon, Joseph and I headed to the park. There were only a couple of other kids there. Joseph ran around randomly, darting from one part of the playground to another, did some climbing, some sliding, then he found himself near two other little boys. One looked like he was about the same size and him, the other looked like his younger brother. They collided going down the slide, giggled, then the older boy pointed at something on the other side of the playground and said, "Let's go over there!" And then Joseph did something remarkable, he pointed in the same direction and then took off running with the other two boys, babbling with excitement. They played together for 10 of 15 minutes, until their mother told them it was time to leave.

This shouldn't be a remarkable event, but it is. Joseph has never played with other kids like this before.

He'll be having his screening on Wednesday at the Nisonger Center at OSU Medical Center.