Frustrations

I'm STILL waiting on my books! I love their prices but I have been told in the past when the same thing happened that they don't have the "man power" to drop an e-mail to let you know when/if your order has been shipped. Hopefully tomorrow they will get here!

"Mouthing" didn't work. Not that Payton didn't think it was fun but its incrediblely hard to tell what someone is saying by mouthing the word....give it a try lol! We might still try this game though b/c "mouthing" a word is a step to communicating.

Therapy, tomorrow. I'll give an update on how it goes!

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!

Official Diagnosis

Payton had her appointment with Childrens the day after Thanksgiving and we have her official diagnosis. After reading through about 20 pages of questions her Dr said it was one of the easiest diagnosis' she has ever made! Payton has Selective Mutism, Obsessive Cumpulsive Disorder and Sensory Integration Dysfunction. The second two are pretty common for Selective Mutes to also have. Its been just over a month and I am still waiting to hear back from their office. They are trying to get Payton into a therapist closer to home because I'm not big on the idea of driving down town and they don't want to start her with one therapist and then switch her. I'm going to call the one closer to home and see what the hold up is early next week because I really want her to get started before next school year! I got the books I ordered and they werent at all what I thought they would be. There was some communication issues with the company I ordered from so they gave me a credit for a free book. I'm going to get that ordered too but in the meantime I passed the other books onto her teacher. Not much has changed on the school front. Payton continues to comminicate non-verbally and was very excited to be the person who got to point out the words as the class read them a few weeks ago. I'll post as we have more updates! If you're reading please leave me a comment! I'd love to hear from other parents of SM kids!

We are scheduled!

I've been calling Children's almost daily and had yet to get ahold of anyone! There was a lady I was supposed to call for the appointment but day after day of leaving messages, she'd either not return my call or she'd call during the 5 minutes it would take me to drive from our house to the school and back. After a frustrating parent teacher conference (more on that later) I called again and this time after getting the machine, I redialed and requested the appointment desk. I was extremely lucky that one of the Drs had a cancelation so we got in for the day after Thanksgiving. Its definately not the most ideal date and way across town but we'll take it!

Now about the conference....it started off good. Her teacher told us how advanced Payton is! Yeah Payton! The good portion was short lived however and quickly turned to "Payton NEEDS to start talking. Here we go again! She told us it would be okay if my mom was there for the next round of testing but she was going to sit at the table, instead of back a ways this time. She said the May testing she would not allow my mom to be there and she wants Payton to start doing simple request such as "I need to go to the bathroom" etc. We went around about how Payton really CAN'T control this. I don't think he teacher quite gets it still! Her teacher is doing a few things right though. She's allowing Payton to participate in group activities by drawing and she's including her in reading groups etc. We agreed that maybe moving her next to two of the girls Payton really seems to like that maybe they will form a friendship and Payton will start talking to them. I'm hoping the therapy is going to really help Payton but I'm not holding out hope that she will talk THIS year...hopefully in the next school year though.

Lastly, I found a great site for SM books. They are priced MUCH cheaper then Amazon! I ordered "The Silence Within" and the Supplemental book for $31 with shipping! Yeah!! I'm going to give the teacher copy to Mrs. S and hope we can use it as a tool to get a better communication system going.

Here's the website for the books....
http://www.selectivemutism.org/resources/abookstore