Aspergers/Autism/Sensory Integration Chatter #2

MrsMac- welcome to the nut house were bouncing of the wall's, hitting our selves in the head and crying are all part of the game :lol:. Atleast in here we can be each others shoulders on our journey's into the unknown.

Christy ...have been thinking of you guy's all night. :pray: that M doesnt have melt downs and it run's smoothly...remember a GA can sometimes give you some normaility ;).

We've been having wet beds.....and outburst. WHY? because I went to Melbourne saturday without him, and only took M :(. Yesterday he kept telling me we had to get his school stuff ready for tomorrow (today) cause its monday and then I said no hon...no more school until next year when your grade 2.....to which I got High 5ed :o . But its still wacked him out. The boysw also got a new cupboard in their room....atleast he took that positively.

off to have a quick shower before the day starts......anyone want to crawl under a rock with me

;)Hi all, sorry i've been MIA...life has been crazy and busy busy busy!

my big news is that we finally got a diagnosis for Ethan! I am so relieved and truth be told a little sad as well because i guess it makes it real IYKWIM..but mostly relieved.
Well the the appointment started off bad...we only moved here 3 weeks ago so i got lost on the way to the dr.s office...i was nearly in tears, we'd waited so long to have the appointment and i was freaking out that we'd miss it...not to worry though the receptionist was lovely and we ended up getting there a little late. I took along a huge folder full of OT, speechy and dr. reports on ethan as well as info on all his quirks, milsetones and the ones he didnt reach, etc etc dating from birth till now and the effort paid off because the paed read through it, watched ethan for a while (who was bouncing of the walls, destroying my wallet etc etc) and gave us a diagnosis on the spot :dance: he said in most cases he gets a second opinion but not in our case... apparently Ethan was pretty text book autistic if there is such a thing. I even asked him where on the scale he thinks ethan sits and he told me not to call it a 'spectrum' as that leaves doubt in the mind...he looked me in the eyes and said 'Celeste, your son is autistic' :o its funny because i went into the appointment expecting to have to push for the diagnosis but apparently Ethan is so text book i didn't need to...its a little sad you know, i guess there's that part of me that wanted the paed to say 'oh he's autistic but he's really high functioning and he'll be fine..' but then i guess i don't need him to say that, i know what Ethan is capable of and i know he's making small improvements all the time. I don't know what the future hold but i have faith and i have so much hope for my little man ;)

Anyway so now i'm trying to get my head around all the funding and stuff... the paed is sending me a copy of the diagnosis so i can fill out the paper work for the advisory program but what do i do about centrelink?? Apparently there is a carers payment? I had a look on the centrelink website and it says that the paed who diagnosed Ethan needs to fill out a Carer Allowance – Medical Report (For a child under 16 years) so do i have to ask him to do that? If someone can shine some light on that it would be very much appreciate ;)

how is everyone coping with the silly season? ;)

Hey lesty and yay for diagnosis!
Call Clink and they will send you a big packet to fill in. There will be a separate form for the paed to do. It's mainly tick boxes etc. It's up to you to give it to the paed, follow it up and hand it back in.

xoxoxo

It must be a relief and a difficult thing at the same time lesty. I know even as I booked the OT for Riley today that I want to go there and have her tell me that I am overreacting and that there is nothing wrong (denial anyone LOL)

Riley has been much more settled lately with less melt downs as we have been much calmer with him and I have been avoiding situations which set him off. He and christy's Matilda had a great time together last week although she was more interested in his big sister LOL It was so relaxing to be with someone who wsn't going to judge me if he had a melt down naturally he was an angel LOL So was Matilda- together they make some sort of zen where all is good, we may start bottling it LOL

Avoided catastrophic meltdown today...ooh it was so close.

Santa was at the shopping centre and ds wanted to talk to him. He hid behind me at first but warmed up fairly quickly. When it was time to go Santa reached into his bag and said "there are 4 colours of lollies in here can you guess the colour of the one in my hand". Oh no...you can't do that to Mitch :o. It puts him on the spot and he gets nervous, then he thinks people are laughing at him so he goes postal...if he got it wrong he would be mortified and go freakin nuts. I was already imagining Santa being called every name in the sun for tricking him :shakehead:.

But NO! he guessed right PHEEEEWWW! Then Santa asks him to guess again - I'm thinking you are KILLING me here Santa - but he guessed again correctly. Phew!

Well done in avoiding a meltdown Mitch!!! Whew... thank goodness he guessed correctly!

lesty, well done on getting a diagnosis. I remember the first time I heard that Matilda was autistic "officially". It was after the ADOS assessment, and the psychologist said "Matilda is autistic" and DH & I just looked at her blankly. I mean, we were pushing for it, and knew it, but hadn't had anyone say it officially to us. Then later the paediatrician saying "So now you have the autism diagnosis, what do you want to do about the ADHD?" and I just stared at him... and said "Nothing" :lol:

awww mrsmac, I'm pretty sure that Riley will put it on sooner or later in front of me ;) But to be honest, it generally takes ages before Matilda feels comfortable enough in front of someone to melt down. Unless its Mitch :rolleyes: she didn't really melt down, but was uber sensitive.... to the way that she was just being wussy in a way I've never seen her act before.... crazy stuff. Mitch won hands down!!!! :lol: I appreciated the zen as well.

Well us.... surgery.....

Matilda came through surgery with flying colours. When we arrived and they were doing all the admission stuff, the nurse said "oh Matilda, I remember you woke up a bit grumpy last time? Do you think we could wake you up with an ice block and start out happy?" I held my breath and Matilda said "What kind of ice block?" LOL

It was the same nurses, same bed, same thing as the scope. So she knew what was happening next. DH got her a new DS game and she was soooo into it (thank GOD!). Then when she woke up, she looked at me and said "Where's my ice block?" She said "I know I have to wee, but I'm a bit scared... will you come with me mummy?" and when she wee'd she said "Its a bit stingy, but not too bad" :o what a freaking star. Last time when she woke up she wanted a different ice block, wouldn't wee and wound up kicking, biting and hitting me whilst screaming and they sent us home because they aren't equipped to deal with it. She was just such a star and just ate when she needed too and did everything without screaming or fighting it so we got home super early. It was awesome. Her recovery has been a bit touch and go, but its expected. Today she's nearly back to herself!!

Unfortunately the results aren't what we expected, so its taking us a while to accept stuff. We sort of thought our journey with everything would be finished after Monday, but we were wrong. She apparently has significant kidney scarring and some damage. For the next 2 years she will have to have a GA and scope every 6 months and ultrasounds every 3 months. So its worse than DH or I expected. No surgery or drugs can repair the damage, its something we have to keep a very close eye on the rest of her life.... and that isn't easy to swallow right now. My poor poppet.... she's so beautiful, and so scarred. :(

Lesty - congrats on the diagnoisis - I know that doesn't sound exactly right but you know what I mean. I'm happy you got some answers and now have a pathway to take. As for the paper work our pead had it all filled out for us and gave us a call about a week after our appointment for us to pick up??

Lulu - omg! well done on avoiding the meltdown - I hate moments like that

Christy - massive hugs to you!!! I wish you and Matilda didn't have to go through this and hoping you get the best outcome available and that it happens soon!

My child has autism. The reality continues to hit as times goes by. I thought at first that the diagnosis was wrong and I wasn't doing it for a label that I was doing it for the financial assistence to get her the help she needed, but now....

Let me backtrack to last week. Last week I signed her up for week long swimming lessons. 30 minutes a day. I thought it would be good to have some routine or something regular for her during school holidays..... well..... she was tired every afternoon, which meant rotten behaviour. She flapped herself to sleep two nights in a row, last night it took her 2 hours of which I had to be sitting with her to get to sleep whilst flapping and kicking her legs.

She's not attacking us at the moment, which is fantastic, we have seen progress over the last few months of her aggressive behaviours. But this stimming, or as I see it "De-stimming" is hard to watch. She's so riled up, she has to flap and kick to get her body to calm down. I tried to do OT stuff before bed, but last night that made it worse. I feel bad because its still an improvement in her behaviour, but its hard to sit and watch her unwind physically.

Last night she let me put her weighted "cuddle friends" on her to help her settle, but it still took 2 hours! We took her to the beach in the afternoon as a reward for her behaviour during the day, and I think it was just too exciting. She swam heaps and should have been wasted.

Ahhhhh well.... she's tired and a mess today, but we aren't going to the beach today for this reason. Its 30 and perfect beach weather, but we will stay at home and put some water in the wading pool for her....

:hug: hon....we're having a rotten time atm to :shakehead:
I know this is gonna sound silly, but you know how the new shower heads have that 'hard' setting...could you try letting her have a shower with that setting at all hitting her back? just cause of the pressure you know? W loved water...still does and if he was highly strung..flapping ect shower it was, even if it was half an hour...I just had to for him and for us

no pyhsical attatcking atm...its more mental. The nasty names, taunting, crying, backchatting. Every day he tell's me what day it is and how many sleeps until he is '2010 8' - meaning its 2010 and he's 8 this year.

I had my brother here last week who we see once every few years. My brother isnt use to kids, let alone special need ones. He took all my attention for 5 hours the first day and then 4 the next. By day 2 W had had enough and flipped and J and I. We had to ignore the phone day 3 and go out to the splash park so we would have no visitors. Christy hon...your girls would LOVE the splash park...W runs and runs, giggles, screams with all the rest of the kids. Friggen awesome!!!!!

Best take someone out to our pool, he's pinging again as water is calling

I am nearly at the end of my mind/tether whatever ATM. Riley seems worse this week, he hasn't been to FDC since before Christmas and Erin has been away so things are out of whack but he is driving us to despair.
He seems to get so overwrought then scream and screams and kicks and hits and won't calm down for ages and ages. Last night he sat behind my bedroom door and screamed "go away" if anyone went near.
Shopping has been difficult too, he seems to lose it really easily there and having my dad tell me that its just cause he's not getting his own way doesn't help. (apparantly I should have "crushed his spirit" by the time he was 18 mths - thanks dad)

I have tried to explain to a good friend about the sensory disorder testing and she says "I really don't think he has a problem" but then in the next breath says maybe i need Supernanny which makes me feel like she is blaming me for his behaviour.

Sorry for the ramble just need to vent.

Mrsmac I have that book for you!!! It will help, I promise :hug:

Thanyou so much hun.

Hi girls
I'm a long time BB member but haven't been around for ages as life has been such hard work. We're dealing with the news that our beloved boy is 'on the spectrum'. Some days it feels like a bad dream that I'll wake up from, other days seem to bring acceptance, others anger, despair and so on. I'm sure you'll know what I mean.

We're seeing our paed again in 3 weeks for the treatment/management plan appt. I'm trying to get my head around the sorts of interventions we can consider so I can try to talk vaguely intelligently and ask the right sorts of questions. Has anyone been doing ABA or the rethinkautism program? I'd love some feedback about those if possible. We've been doing OT with a sensory specialist since last July plus some speech. He'll be attending EI at Yooralla instead of 3yo kinder and has inclusion support at childcare. We're also seeing the head of the children's sleep unit at Monash for his sleep (or lack thereof :wall:) and finally getting somewhere with that. Hopefully more sleep will lead to greater success with his interventions. :pray:

I'll go back and read more of the previous posts so I can catch up on you and your stories. I'd love to be a part of a supportive group like BB again.

Thanks!

Hi blackbird :hug: welcome.

We don't move very fast in this thread, but its a good place to come for understanding and support. We do not do ABA, only because I don't think it would help Matilda where she is. We are booked in for doing something called RDI, you can have a good google about it ;). Our paed explained that there were 3 basic areas for behaviour, one was ABA, one was floortime (which is an OT based emotional regulation sort of thing) and one was RDI. There were other things out there, but these are the 3 basic ones. We are doing RDI because we've been doing OT based emotional regulation for a while and thought we'd try something else at the same time. Its basically teaching the parents how to help develop the child relationally.

Sleep is a major thing for most kids "on the spectrum". This week its taken Matilda 2 hours to get to bed everynight... its very frustrating as a parent, but apparently very very normal for our superkids.

I'm up too early, but I will come back again soon.... today we go to the urologist to find out about the ultrasound yesterday.... from my eyes, her kidney is not looking too good, but we'll see what she says.

Hey Blackbird! Welcome to our nutty corner of the woods.

After the last yukky few weeks of the year, xp and I have decided to 'divide and conquer' the kids. He takes DS for a few days to a week whilst I have DD, then swap over so we have alone time with both of them. I feel slightly sucky that I couldn't face so many weeks with no kinder and the both of them together by myself :redface:. But then again we all enjoy the break.

I'm really feeling conflicted (or something, too hot to think) - poor DD. She isn't sensory and was a pretty Zen baby....but...well...I can't help but be sad she has picked up the 'bad' side of DS and his tanties and anxiety. She is nearly 4 and I think quite sick to death of always being in the background. I think her starting kinder herself this year will help, she is getting restless like most of them do at this age and I'm glad she will have something all to herself :shakehead:

Mitch has discovered Star Wars, and it's been a life saver. He found a game xp bought for the wii - Lego Star Wars and although I didn't think he should play it the little fella has negotiated his way though nearly the whole game all on his own (i'm no bloody help!). He could play it for days on end, but he doesn't. It's worked wonders for getting him to do other things (make bed, get dressed) first.

He really achieves something on it - there has been a couple of almighty tanties but once I managed to get him to trust himself and to BREATHE...and think.....and let his head cool down, he actually DOES IT!!! So brilliant for his confidence and it's got to the point that he will put the controls down on his own and 'have a break mum'.

He plays about an hour in the morning and an hour in the afternoon. I know it's probably too long but if anyone argues with me they can kiss my shiny white botty. DD gets time with me, I get time to do stuff and his confidence in himself has grown.

Thankfully a family therapist I pulled into the fray has pointed out my plan to enrol DS in Aikido this year was not the way to go. With him starting school this year she thinks it would be waaaay too much for at least the first year and I totally agree with her.

I'm not talking to him too much about school. He is busting to start but if I give him too much info he tends to build up quite a tight idea of what is supposed to happen and if it doesn't work the way he has imagined it will that's where the trouble starts :o.

Christy - I'm sorry to hear about Matildas kidney, I was positive there wasn't going to be much damage...I still hope it's not too bad. She has been so amazing about it all. Wish you could move to Melb and put her in Mitchell's school. I bet she would love it as much as he does.....and then I can have more of a piece of you! :redface: I go to call you all the time...then something happens - you know the drill :)

Hi Blackbird,

My daughter is 15yrs old she has Cerebral palsy, intellectual disability and autism.

I looked into ABA back when I first got my little girl but found it far to expensive for us to afford. I also found very varied results from people I spoke to about it - people were either extreamly happy or very disapointed in the results from ABA.

Just over 12 months ago I looked into diet based treatment for autism, initially starting GFCF with great results and then we started FAILSAFE/low chemical based diet (which works much faster than GFCF) I have since found out a lot of my daughters autism tendencies are caused by dairy. Every child is different but I was quiet impressed to have results with in 1-2 weeks of starting - some people have had major improvements with in weeks and others, like us, found small but impressive results. We are still on the testing stages (had to put it all on hold for 5 months when my daughter broke her leg which caused a lot of muscle problems). You can find out more info by googling either FAILSAFE or Sue Dengate. There is also a couple of books around which go into more details of the program, which needs to be supervised by a dietician who specialises in the diet.
I personally recommend FAILSAFE, I found GFCF is based around FAILSAFE but the tests you need to get are not as accurate because the foods have to be in the childs system in order to test for them where FAILSAFE can be based around the foods you child already eats.
Feel free to PM me for more details.

Good luck


Sjl

We use the failsafe diet as well most of the time. I find if her behaviours get worse, if I take out preservatives and chemicals out (as well as her allergies) than we can get a handle on things better. Maitlda is allergic to dairy already, so we have that out of our diets as well.

I did failsafe and found that the additive 320 sends him off his face, I have been a bit slack about the other additives since them but am really strict about no 320.

We are off to our 1st OT appt on Thursday, lots of forms to fill out , I think I am expceting a miracle LOL

BB meetup on Friday, I am terrified Riley will meltdown and hit some kid then lose it completely. I am almost tempted to leave him with my dad.

mrsmac - the meet-up is at my place and if anyone dares say anything if Riley has a meltdown they can take themselves somewhere else! We love Riley and I'll be very upset with anyone who dares look askance or makes a comment. I don't think there's many Riley and Lucy's age coming, so there'll hopefully be less provocation.

I'm also blocking off upstairs (where the bedrooms are). If you and Riley need a break, you are welcome to take him up there with some toys to give him some space. I'll make sure the aircon is on. If he's okay outside there's also plenty of space to play.

If there is anything you think would make it more comfortable for Riley and you'd like to bring him, let me know and I'll see what I can do.

Thanks so much Jen, I have left quite a few places in tears with him and I just get scared of what people must think. I am having a tough time atm and feling a bit fragile.
Erin is coming which usually makes things easier so fingers crossed.

I will be there sans kiddies too!!!! So you will have some back up from me, I promise :D

So, how is everyone going?

Today, its hot where we are and the cicadas were up early :rolleyes: Fricken Cicadas!!!!! I now have my super princess all over the place. She woke up flappin' and then couldn't sit down, she just fell over everything and paced for a while. We all sat down to watch a movie in our PJ's and she wandered back & forth in front of the TV.

Thankfully, after getting frustrated with her, I asked her what we could do help her settle down. She said "I think I need the bean bag squish" So we did it, and then I asked her "How many do you think you need?" and she said "3". So we did it 3 times and you know what? She's now standing on the back of the lounge balanced on one leg watching the movie with us. I'm happy that she's not pacing anymore, of course I would prefer she sit on the lounge, but *meh* at least we can watch the movie without her pacing in front of us and falling over toys and the table.

i have a woo hoo and i did get soooo excited only for my sister to break my bubble of excitment

murray has gone to bed for 3 nights and woke up dry in underpants and used the potty all day only had a few accidents when out

he has been so much more easier to control but inthe arvos hes still really chanlanging i have no idea where this change has come from but i like it

im hoping hes ok when we head home tho

but i have a big queastion

Teeth Grinding how do i stop him from constintly grinding them he even does it in his sleep i was told to use a mouth gaurd but im sure it would just get chewed to bits

Hi all, so sorry i haven't dropped in in a while..for some reason BB wouldn't let me post in forums?? Seems to be working today so figured i'd update ;)

Thanks to Lulu, Christy...and ummmmm whoever else gave me info about claiming centrelink carers allowance...we have a follow up appointment for Ethan next month so will ask the dr. to fill out the claim forms then.

Ethan has his assessment with EI next week WOOOHOO looking forward to getting the ball rolling there. I've been looking into starting a sensory diet with him, i think a lot of his behaviour/hyperness/stimming is because of sensory processing issues so hopefully the diet will help.

Today has been a crappy day :wall: poor Dh was up last night with a spewy bug which means its only a matter of time before the rest of us get it and ethan always goes feral when he's sick. We're off to a wedding next week so am praying we're all ok by then:pray:
Ethan hasn't been having his day sleeps lately which means he's absolutely cranky,feral and yuck by 3pm. I just lost my lolly with him and put him into bed in a vain hope that he'll sleep but i doubt it. He has been constantly hitting,pushing and screaming at his little brother. Some days its literally every 5 minutes that i'm telling him not to hit. By the end of the day i'm so exhausted from repeating myself:wall:
And to top it off i've got a touch of mastitis! I must have slept on my booby (dam sensitive breasts) which caused a nasty big lump. Yesterday i felt terrible, with fever and overal yucky flu like symptoms. I was able to get a little nap while the boys were resting which was nice. The lumps still there today. Not as big but still there. I've been offering DS2 more feeds on that booby and gently massaging the lump..all the right things and i'm starting to feel a bit better, still bloody painful though.

Ah well thats life ey' :rolleyes:

Hi ladies, may I say how much I love having this thread to come into and feel "normal".

I think spending the day with Christy and the girls on thursday has really settled me and made me feel so much better. The book is great too- The Out of sync child, I am reading it nodding at heaps of things.

Lestyrox- GL with EI, we have an EI unti at the school I teach at and the teacher has been a great resource for me, what a shame you aren't down here.

Christy- wow good on Matilda for being able to say what to do to help her, she is such a beautiful little girl, Erin can't wait to see her again.

Hi ladies,
well finally after what seems an eternity my darling boy has now been refered to a unit to assess children with special needs.
We are hoping to find out whether he has aspergers or is just obsessive.
Im hoping to get some idea from you ladies about what is involved and some things i should do to help the assessment etc along.
My new GP has been fantastic and has told me to right a list of his traits etc.
Looking forward to getting to know you all and hopefuly get som answers for my middle man.

Hi tan and welcome to our little corner of the earth :hug:

Well, Matilda's first day back to school tomorrow.... eeeek. I'm working tonight until 2am (here atm :shh:). So I will be tired and probably tearful when dropping her off. It will be great for her to get back into routine, and she has mostly the same kids and same teacher and teachers aide so its all the same as last year except a renovation to the school which she's already seen and marked out her desk etc, so she knows what its going to look like tomorrow too. I'm excited for her, as I think this year will be much better than last year with all her health issues as well.

I have a kindy boy in my class this year who is autistic and thanks to so much help and advice from Christy with regards to DS I had the BEST interview with his mum. She was so relieved to find a teacher who understood and knew about different things (like social stories, communication book) and who wanted to do them. She in turn helped me with things about DS so I think we will have a really mutually beneficial year!
I had to do a pre school test with this little boy and thanks to skills my OT taught me it went really well even though mum said he was stimming when he came in.

Awesome mrsmac, you will be the best teacher for him!! Apparently you are an awesome teacher (from Mrs Powis... ;)). I think you will have a better understanding of him and stimming than a lot of teachers.

Mitch starts tomorrow too and is literally twitching right now. Can't wait to get into some semblance of routine again....

Hi girls,

I don't have a child with any kind of spectrum disorder or other special needs, but I do work with a few, and I was wondering if some of you might be able to give me some suggestions of what kinds of strategies we can use with these beautiful special little people.

We have three little boys who have been diagnosed with autism and have varying degrees of autism. Naturally each one is very different to the other and what works with one doesn't work with the others. On Mondays we have two of the boys at the centre, with only one support worker, which make it pretty tought to help them both. We use visual boards and cards with all three boys, as well as some of us using a bit of makaton to try to communicate. All three boys are bilingual, with one not speaking english at all (he actually rarely vocallises at all).

I will firstly ask about this one little boy who has just started at our service. He is 4y.o. He comes twice a week. He has just recently been diagnosed with Autism. He doesn't speak English and neither does his mum, so this is an extra challenge for us to deal with as it makes it difficult to find out what things work for her at home. They do have a social worker (I think??) who works with them, and who has been to our service to translate and give us information, but it's the day to day questions we struggle with. I'm not sure if mum has many strategies to help her son at the moment, and she might be struggling a bit. She has asked us to toilet train him, but is not willing to do it at home. At the centre he is really difficult to change his nappy, but at home apparently he is ok. He won't sleep at our centre, but at home has 2-3hr day sleeps. We use visuals with him to try to help with communication, as well as trying to introduce some makaton to him too.

I have no idea what to actually ask, other than can anyone think of any strategies we could use within our service, keeping in mind we are a long day care centre with up to 19 other children in the room to care for, two full time carers and one special need worker who is there for 4hours.

Whoa Kel that is a hard one. As a mother I would say that it isn't fair to expect you to TT him without being willing to do it at home as well.

My daughter didn't eat, sleep or toilet at all when she was in a centre. It was all too much for her, way too stimulating. She also didn't talk much while she was there. Sometimes some of the best centres are not the right places for these kids. We didn't know what we know now and I don't think I would have even attempted it.

Is there somewhere like the office he can go with the lights low or off and put headphones on him with a DS or something like that to "take him away" from what is going on around him? Sometimes MP3 players with blockout headphones are a good break for these kids who have difficulties hearing more than one thing at a time. The less stimulating, the more relaxed he will be.

Some of these super kids have intense focus on one thing, find that thing and use it to reward him for sleeping or resting, eating etc etc... it maybe something that the other kids aren't allowed to do at the centre, but it maybe what gets him through?

Matilda's DS is our lifesaver in places of stress for her, she can escape into her DS with her headphones on in a dark corner (or we make a cubby under a table or something for her) in order to destimulate and focus.

HTH!

Mitch started school yesterday, was very excited and ran straight into the classroom :dance:
When I picked him up after lunch he was still happy but a bit tired. At one stage he was quite overwhelmed and got a bit angry according to his teacher. She was pleased he could vocalise his anger but he couldn't say why he felt that way. I asked him about it later on and I think there was too much going on for him. We agreed he would sit on the steps outside the classroom if it got too much or tell Laura he needed things to stop. She is really happy with that.
He didn't want to go today and it took me a bit to get him in the classroom. I will pick him up earlier and might even let him skip Friday if it's going to be very warm again. It was too hot to sleep last night so I can't see him having a great day :shakehead:

I'm a bit sad....but so glad I have chosen to eat toasted sandwiches for awhile and send him to a school further away. They take everything in their stride.

Great news - against all the odds another student has a little brother attending Beth's kinder! so we may be able to work something out with both school and kinder pickups - AND this parent is the one who researched and implemented the school movement program so she has a piece of my heart already.

I hope he adjusts soon, I can't stand the thought of him not having a good time :wall:

Is the school movement program like Brain gym Lulu?

From what I understand no it's not. Rather than working on the 'higher' brain functions this addresses the more primal pathways and works on re-laying or reinforcing them...and this is where I'm interested because it addresses/helps sensory dysfunction.

Have you got any links to where I could get hold of it please??? I could use it for my class and also for DS. It sounds awesome.

It's fairly intensive, the entire class do it three times a week and you will need a few volunteer parents and some equipment. There aren't any links because this mum has developed it herself - last year was the (very successful) pilot, this year they are fine tuning it for release to other schools that are interested too.

I will get the info sheets from the school again though, I turned the house upside down looking for them so I could explain it better.

:

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Just a quick one -

had the parent info session at the school last night - I'm thrilled to pieces again.
They have a program run by 2 volunteer parents (1 is a teacher there too) called the Movement Program. Both parents have sensory kids and one has a parent who was very involved as an OT.
They have developed this program to integrate the primitive reflexes and replace them with postural reflexes - these movements help integrate the sensory system and therefore the sensory responses :dance:

The teacher noticed over the years the preps (due to their age, sensory or not) had trouble tracking things with their eyes and this was making reading etc UNFUN and a source of frustration. They both brought together their knowledge and understanding of sensory integration/the nervous systems and how we learn, researched their head off and within 3 weeks of starting the program this year found a noticeable difference with the children!

In another year or so they are looking at broadening the program to include other schools etc. Amazing stuff and I've volunteered to help next year. :dance:

Cried on the way home though, sheer relief.

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There is another post I did on it xoxoxo

:hello: hi its me again :D

sorry ive been awol.....life has gotten hectic and well by the end of the school holidays I had a boy pinging and hanging to go back :dance:
Big thing this week - we lost our first tooth.....screaming in the process of doing it but once it was out he is fasinated to say the least. So now we have alot of mirror looking and noises :rolleyes: BUT last night we found him trying to pull out another tooth that isnt even loose yet :o...the fixtation has started!

Another SN child at school yesterday punched him in the head....Thank god he told me because the communication book ive worked so hard to get organised didnt come home :angry: I am so annoyed to say the least! They want me to 'behave' so to speak and yet something as important as letting me know about this via the book is a pft. Its not that im worried about the other child hitting W, thats not my point its that they didnt send home the dame book. The principal atleast rang jed (he's been told not to ring me any more). So now I sit here waiting for them to call me back so I can ask for the book back tonight.
He made me a card for my bfday yesterday and wrote happy 21st in it :ROFL: he also knows im going in for my op tomorrow and i hope that he isnt to bad for me not being there :(

HOpe everyone is good as can be, going back to catch up on what ive missed out on

Hi all, how's everyone today?

We had a follow up appointment with Ethan's Paed. yesterday.... turns out Ethan's IgM levels are low :o So my poor little guy has to have another blood test to recheck it... I'm FREAKING out, when he had the last blood test it was HORRIBLE. My poor hubby had to take him and physically hold him while they jabbed his little arms :cry: and because his little veins are so tiny they had to jab him like 5 times. He was so traumatised, by the time they got home from the appointment my poor hubby was as white as a ghost from such a horrendous experience and my poor little Ethan was so shook up he wouldn't even let us take the bandaids off his arms because he thought we were going to hurt him :cry: and now we have to do it all again.

I was even tempted to just not get it re checked to save Ethan from the pain but i'm a bit worried about his IgM level...i googled low IgM it and lots of scary things like lukemia and cancer comes up...very frightening. His Dr. thinks its probably just a mistake since he looks well and hasn't been sick but i'm still a little freaked out that it could be more. Hubby is going to take Ethan for the blood test next week. I just want it done so i know he's ok.

I don't know whether to tell ethan about the blood test though... i thought i might wait until the last minute to tell him but i know all the bad memories from last time will come flooding back and he'll probably freak out.. but i don't want to spring it on him either... either way i know its going to be horrible :(