This is HUGE!

As you guys know, people Payton meets in the "school setting" she can't talk to. It doesn't seem to matter if they are taken out of the school setting...if thats where she first encounters them she can't bring herself to talk to them after that. Payton was best friends with Lily at her school all last year but she of course never spoke to her. Today we got home from church and Lily had called and left a message for Payton. Payton was so excited and called her back and SPOKE to her. It was an amazing thing to witness! Best friends for a year but Payton had only communicated with her non-verbally, now sharing their FIRST verbal conversation! Payton asked her if she had any brothers or sisters and told her, her siblings names. She even invited her to come and play this week. Of course with 6 year olds they both agreed but didn't pick a date so I'll have to call her mom back this week. This is an amazingly huge step! Now if I could just talk Lily's parents into moving into our new neighborhood so they can be in 1st grade together lol!

Therapy!

It's been a while since I've posted so I wanted to share where we're at. Payton started therapy in late April. We were told that progress is very slow for this type of therapy and short, frequent sessions are best. She's been seeing April once a week for an hour a session. We are making some progress. At first she would not whisper in front of April (we'd go in the hallway) but she's graduated into whispering to me in front of April. She's filling tablets of paper telling April things that way but no words yet. She really enjoys April though and tells me how she would love to talk to her "someday!"

We've had some exciting steps forward like telling the girl at Target "thank you" in the dressing room and talking to the neighbor boy who will be attending first grade with her. It seems people met in a non-school environment she is sometimes able to talk to in small amounts....we're hoping to make this work for us by making some new friends outside of school and then requesting they're in the same class. On the flip-side we've had some reminders of how being non-verbal STINKS....they mis-spelled her name on a VBS tag this week and she wasn't able to communicate this to her teacher and it really upset her that her name had been spelled wrong. They forgot to call her name to "pick a buddy" too but Payton wasn't able to communicate that either ;o( We've been sending a pad of paper and a pen to VBS every since so if she needs to talk, she can write in down. I told her teacher about it and instructed Payton to write it down and hold the paper above her head....it worked like a charm when she had to go to the bathroom today! yeah!

I ordered a few more books from sm.org last night also. "The Ideal Classroom..." was excellent so I ordered the other one by the same author. I also ordered a childrens book that looks really good! I hope maybe her teacher can read it to the class the first week to explain a little about Payton! Richie and I are working on making a card like the one in sm.orgs bookstore too of common things Payton would need to communicate and then she can point to it on the card. Hopefully that will help this school year!