Were Off and Running

When I say off and running, I mean in full force. Eric has therapy 7 days a week now. He is meeting his hours and more, no question on that. The days where he has half days of school or no school are filled with increased therapy hours. The good news is that with more hours, the more improvement there is. The bad news, it eats up a most of our family time and privacy, and it can be quite hard on Eric. On full school days they are usually here right away when he gets home, and they work with him until about 6:30 at night. By about 5:30-6pm he is very cranky and uncooperative. not that I can blame him. I would be pretty tired, cranky, hungry and ready to have my time to myself by then too! As much as I want to go upstairs and tell them to let up on him, I can't. He has to learn to hold on. It's just like I can't go up there and rescue him when he has a tantrum, they have to do their job and sometimes he isn't going to be happy about it. With all of that said, I really believe that we would not be where we are with Eric right now if we didn't take this commitment full on. He is saying so much more. He will drink out of a straw cup now. He is most of the way potty trained now (hope I don't jinx this now!). He's much more tolerant of hats, the hair clippers, and a spoon in his mouth. I may even be able to brush his teeth with toothpaste soon (he will brush well with just water, better than nothing...)! He was singing along with Madonna to "Who's That Girl" and doing a darn good job at it! I never thought I would see many of these things happen. He still has a long way to go, and we will be taking advantage of his next 2 years of intensive therapy. After his 3 years of the intensive phase are up he will go into the ongoing program until he is 18. The funding will be greatly reduced and will cover things like classes at the Y or RexPlex, horseback riding therapy, music therapy, social skills classes, very reduced ABA, ect. Part of me is looking forward to this because it will be easier on the family, but 3 years sometimes seems so short for the intensive.

We've had a change in personnel at all levels. The provider has changed the supervisor for Eric, and ultimately our family's case (Andy will be starting in a few months, don't know how that's going to be handled) Eric now has a new senior therapist since his previous one was overwhelmed with her load, and new line therapists are training in. These are all positive changes. The changeover is going quite smooth now that we are up and going after all the illness, ect.

Today's session went well until the half way point when it was time to change therapists. He had a major meltdown. I thought the second session was going to be toast until she took him outside for a while. After that, he was calm and cooperative the rest of the time, although very hungry and ready to relax after!