You Have Come A Long Way Baby

I promise I will get around to a post on our trip to Disneyland! However, first I need to do a Matthew post.

Let me start by saying Matthew has had a great school year. I mean, fantastic! No real problems in the classroom, academically is right on target, has finally discovered that reading can be really cool, and that math and science is even cooler!! He loves his teacher and so do we, he has adjusted to first grade amazingly well, and socially has made friends on his own without intervention from me. He can follow/contribute to conversations, can understand and partake in other imaginary play with other kids, isn't intimidated to join in pretend play with his peers, and actually understands very well when directions are explained by his teacher.

So in October, we visited his doctor for his Asperger issues (she is actually a developmental pediatrician) and after evaluating him, she pretty much said that he now is much more 'neurotypically normal' and that unless we had some specific problems in the future, we didn't have to come back. She cautioned that it is possible in the future (maybe 3rd-4th grade ish) that a learning disability could come into play but she said at this point he is behaviorally normal. Which was really good to hear! So in the last couple of weeks I have met with the school speech therapist with whom Matthew had been working with as according to his IEP (individualized educational program, kids with disabilities get these for help in their education) and we decided to do a review/re-evaluation of his skills. Basically, this meant I refilled out some paperwork regarding his behavior and the school psychologist and speech therapist had to do different observations of Matthew to see how he behaved in various school settings.

So yesterday, we finally had the meeting to go over what the observations/findings were and to sum it up.....he is out. He doesn't need services, he doesn't need the IEP anymore, he has very little that is socially abnormal. In fact, it was a very short meeting (under 1/2 an hour!) and his teacher (who was there) laughingly said it was one of the more enjoyable ones she has been to! I was pleased to say the least. And I commented to her that I was almost laughing filling out the questionnaire because almost all the questions were "NO" when three years ago so many of them were "YES". As in yes, we observe this behavior and this behavior etc. It was just amazing to me because so many of those questions totally pertained to Matthew three years ago and now don't even relate at all. There are a few tendencies, he can still be sensitive to some noise, he still often takes things quite literally. His Doctor actually said she really believes most of these things are due to his natural temperament (Andy has a few similar traits as well!). But he has also learned to read facial expressions and understand emotions of others. He has learned empathy and can relate to how other peers may feel about things.

Andy and I are so incredibly proud of how far he has come. To the child who often left me in tears of exasperation to the kid that seems to have very little fear in him at all. The future is looking very bright indeed!

E is for "Exit Strategy"

So a couple of weeks ago, Matthew's Occupational Therapist and I (and his Doctor) agreed that now is a good time to take a break from OT for awhile. He actually is progressing really well, has come so far in many areas...particularly his writing skills and some of his abilities to handle certain situations. Plus, they want to do an evaluation with a speech therapist to see what/if any attention needs to be put into place. It has kind of been one thing at a time...we were doing some OT and now we will see what's next. Plus school will start in less than a month and he still will get some services through the school.

Almost all of July, Matthew was complaining how he didn't want to go to therapy anymore, it was boring, he would rather play at home etc. etc., really fighting me on even going. However, when the time came to tell him that he only had 2 more weeks of seeing "Jen" he did have a bit of a freak out!! He begged me to sign him back up and really kind of had a hard time dealing with the fact that therapy was going to end for awhile. Jen was great though and really prepared him, and this Wednesday was the first one in months that we haven't gone to therapy in the morning. And he was o.k. with it.

I think the one that perhaps needed some more preparation for this was me!! I hadn't realized how I had relied on Jen to kind of help me out with some of the tough situations that we would come across. They weren't situations that usually would require a call to the doctor, but little things that I could easily bring up on Wednesdays. Sometimes either Jen could give me suggestions on how to handle Matthew or she could bring it up in a story or game with him on how to deal with the problem. It was just nice to have that little bit of extra support when/if I needed it. But for now, Matthew is doing fine and is getting excited for school again, and I will be fine even if Matthew does have a rough time. I keep telling myself, only a couple more weeks till school and then we can all be back on a regular schedule...not only for Matthew's sanity but for my own as well! Change is apparently hard on all of us!! :)