So Much To Do

I mentioned that we took Jack to a child psychologist in July for pyschoeducational testing.  Our main goal was to get some recommendations of implementations we could try this year to help Jack be as ready for Kindergarten next year as possible.  Jack's pediatrician had recommended a doctor in the Atlanta area that specialized in ASDs and seemed to be giving other parents some really great information.  I wrote in this post about how much I liked the doctor during the testing.  It took us a while to set up the meeting to receive the results Ben and I really wanted to speak with her about the results together since we would be discussing lots of hands on things we could try to implement at home with Jack.  Due to Ben's work schedule, it was about a month later when we finally spoke with the doctor and received the results of the testing.  We were excited to get some recommendations for how to proceed in a way that would be most beneficial to Jack. We know that he is going to have some struggles in school, but we don't want any of those to be because we didn't provide him with something he needs now.

We wanted recommendations and boy, did we get some!! The doctor was fantastic and so thorough in giving us some really useful and practical information.  She also gave us a duel diagnosis:  Sensory Integration Disorder and Asperger's Disorder - no surprises there, but it is nice to have the diagnosis that we feel is correct.  But much more important than that was a list of ways to get started doing what will help Jack be as successful as possible in school and every other area of life.  Some of the recommendations were for Jack as he grows and gets older and I really appreciated those as well - the ability to grow with him as he learns new things.

Some of the suggestions she had were:

OT services:  We were planning on this anyway, but some of Jack's major issues have to do sensory processing weaknesses and fine motor difficulties.  We have found a private OT about 90 miles from us with a full sensory gym and were pleased with our evaluation there last week.  We begin weekly sessions with them after Labor Day.


Picture schedule providing a visual source of information about his day.


"Projects" designed to increase Jack's appropriate social behavior


Structure to help Jack talk about his day to assist him in communicating more effectively (i.e. Instead of "How was your day?", break it down into "On the way to school, I..." and "One thing that happened today at school was...", etc.  Many times, those broader questions make conversation difficult for children with Asperger's.)


Using visual strategies with Jack as much as possible


Use his interests to help teach skills that he won't learn naturally (i.e. Use movie previews and people's facial expressions in them to talk about feelings and attempt to intuit how people feel in certain situations.)

These are just a couple.  We have nine pages of recommendations like this, but much more detailed with examples of exactly how to implement each suggestion.  How great is that?  Of course, the other side to that is that it seems like SO MUCH TO DO and can be overwhelming. But, having more suggestions than we can handle right now is such a better feeling than the "I have no idea what to do" feeling.

We are taking it one thing at a time.  We've implemented the easier ones and we are about to get started on a picture schedule for Jack each day next week.  We have also started implementing some conversation exercises and connecting feelings to facial expressions.  And like I said earlier, we felt the OT services were the most important thing at this time and we are headed in that direction.  Jack also is seeing a PT and working with a special education teacher once weekly from the school board.  Add all that to one fantastic preschool teacher and we are feeling good about this year.

But the best thing is that this 20 page report we got from the doctor was full of some really great things.  It talked about how Jack tested in the above average range for cognitive abilities and how he showed very superior academic skills and she even felt that if his IQ test had not included fine and gross motor skills, he would have tested even higher than he did in the above average range. {Sorry for the bragging there, but the kid is brilliant.  I mean, every parent knows that right - it was just very nice to see that belief backed up with testing:) } And even better than all that was how she talked about how adorable Jack was and how interesting to talk with and all the really cool things he did throughout the evaluation.  But even better than all that was that there is nothing at all in that report that says Jack isn't going to be a healthy, successful, loving, caring and wonderful person.  Yes, we have so much to do, but it is all in helping Jack become the person God created him to be and I'm so excited to watch that happen.  So very excited.  And I am so thankful that I'm the person that gets to do that all day, every day.  So let's get started!