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!

hmmm, maybe a new idea!

Payton had her first "library day" at school today. We read the book she picked three times together. Payton really enjoyed the book and wanted to tell her teacher how much she liked it. I got the idea of maybe writing a note to tell Mrs S about it! With my help, Payton wrote her teacher a note about how she read the book and really liked it! She's now communicating through head gestures, sign and now paper...we just need talking lol!

Haven't heard back from her pediatricians office about the referral yet so I'll call back tomorrow. She had an ok day at school today. She was kinda in a bad mood because I made her wear pants (she went through the same type of thing last Spring with wearing shorts after she was so used to pants.) Mrs S asked me what was wrong today and kinda acted like she thought it was strange when I told her the reason why she was acting funny today. I don't know if there's a connection to the SM but Payton is picky about certain fabrics, freaks out when her hands are sticky etc...just generally pretty sensitive about things like that. She had a decent day at school though and said they had inside recess and she played with the kids in her class....yeah!