Is it the end of July already?

School is getting so much closer- and the days are getting so much shorter! Sorry it has taken me so long to post again, but as many of you I have been packed with activities and getting thing situated with my classroom and new students. Dalton has been making lots of progress and we have all been so busy trying to keep up with him. He will imitate most anything you ask from him and he absolutely loves his new CD with some Wiggles song on it. I am sure all the therapist look Hilarius dancing around upstairs, but Dalton loves it and that is the important thing. We are still working on language, but for the most part we can get Dalton to imitate most any sounds. It is not yet functional, or spontaneous but that will come with time. His parents just got him signed on with a speech therapist here in Rock Hill, so he will be getting private occupational therapy and speech twice a week! Super Exciting!!! Brigitte and I will be meeting with the therapists on Wednesday and Thursday to hopefully finally get everyone in Dalton's life on the same page. We have created a system of communication between private OT and hope to carry it over withe Speech and school. It is exciting to get everyone in Dalton's life on the same plan!!! We have an extremely good team of girls working for us this summer and I am impressed with how quickly the new girls have caught on to ABA. We are going to continue trying to squeeze 30 hours of ABA from Dalton during the school year, but will have to work on weekends to continue giving him his services. Having programs just start up is hard to do and even though Dalton has had a home program for 2 years it has mostly been in just the summers. The therapist tend to "disappear" when school starts. I am excited to say that for the most part we will be keeping all of our girls for Dalton. We have a few that will not be able to work but maybe 4-6 hours a week, but still they want to stay on board! This is so important when running home programs! Once you finally get everyone in the same groove it runs pretty smoothly. So, we are finally at that point in the program. Everyone is comfortable with what they are doing and are no longer being "trained" just maintenance training for specific target skills. Dalton has really progressed in his play skills. I was babysitting Dalton one evening, and was cooking dinner and he was stimming in the living room. I brought him to the kitchen table and placed a puzzle, shape sorting, and Colorama game in front of him and he sat there just as happy as can be for 30 minutes playing while I cooked dinner. It was AWESOME!! He sat there without stimming and was just playing. We hope to get him to the point to where he will get the game and bring it to the table to play with. We want independent and spontaneous play skills from him.

Lesli Ann- Dalton's new teacher- came out to meet with us in the middle of July and we talked a long time about the plan for Dalton this school year and what we hope to see from this new transitional program. I think Dalton is ready for a change and he deserves some consistency in all areas of his life! We are all trying to work something out that meets every ones needs and meeting the needs of 5 different women is not an easy job! :-) Everyone likes their system, but in the best interest of Dalton have to compromise sometimes. Lesli Ann is WONDERFUL and is going to do phenomenal things for Dalton in this upcoming year. She has so much energy and will get down in the floor and play with Dalton which is what he loves! :-)


Well, that is all I have time for now. More to come soon! :-)

Lesslie