My Babies
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Time4Learning Review Update
Well after using Time4Learning for most of the school year, I think we are going to move another direction next year. I love the math and LA sections on T4L but I am less than impressed with their science and social studies, and I just can't justify the cost for only two subjects. Also my eldest is very much a perfectionist when it comes to video games and the program correcting him on screen was a huge frustration for him. Thus he would not sit and do the work by himself. If he wasn't 100% sure of an answer, he would call me over for help instead of at least trying on his own. I am thinking about using workboxes next year with some sort of curriculum. I like the looks of Lifepacs. I am going to try the workbox system with practice stuff over the summer to see if we like it so I will update more on that later.
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Little Guy has PDD-NOS
Well there's a fun alphabet soup label for ya all. PDD-NOS means Pervasive Developmental Disorder Not Otherwise Specified. Pretty much he has A-typical Autism, or he has a lot of Autism symptoms but he isn't a typical case of Autism. Here's a link that explains the diagnosis far better than I ever could if anyone is more interested in what's going on. http://www.autismspeaks.org/navigating/pdd_nos.php He also was diagnosed with an expressive and receptive language disorder. I am not sure why that was diagnosed separately. Just to give a better picture of what's going on for insurance purposes probably.
Anyways we arrived in Peoria Monday afternoon and scoped out the Easter Seals clinic where we would be headed the next day. It was a little hard to find because the GPS was trying to take us to the Children's Hospital and the clinic was actually behind the hospital but a quick phone call straitened that out. We then scoped out a nearby hotel where we would hang out for the night. We took Little Guy to Ruby Tuesdays for dinner simply because I was highly impressed with their online allergy info. The wait staff was very helpful with that as well. They double-checked everything for us. We then headed back to the motel for the night. Little Guy played with his favorite pop-up toy in the motel and stayed up too late tossing and turning since the environment was different, but he did eventually go to sleep thank goodness.
Tuesday morning we got up bright and early, took advantage of the hotel's free breakfast and drove back over to the clinic. The staff there was wonderful. They were all very friendly and informative. Of course Little Guy decided to be on his absolute best behavior throughout so I was a bit worried they wouldn't see the whole picture. But thankfully we submitted video of his behavior at home and all of the info from his therapists were sent over, so all and all I think they got a good idea of what he is generally like. They questioned us, did a play-based assessment and went over all the observations from the therapists and videos and then had a conference with us giving us the overview of the diagnosis. They also gave us a folder full of resources and man I wish we lived closer because their clinic has tons of therapy opportunities that aren't available in our area. And then we were on our way. We should be receiving a more comprehensive report in about a month.
Considering that I have thought Little Guy has some sort of Autism since he was 11 months old, I wasn't remotely shocked at his diagnosis. Nor am I really sad. He is still the same Little Guy we know and love and he is so fun to play with and be around. We are already up to our eyeballs in therapy so that will be nothing new. We just had our suspicions confirmed and now we can accept it and move on with hopefully more therapy options to help him out
They did recommend that our speech therapists start working with pecs with him. Which is basically teaching him to use pictures to enhance his communication. Here is a good site on that for more information. http://autism.healingthresholds.com/therapy/picture-exchange-communication-system-pecs
They also recommended ABA therapy which I am hoping Early Intervention will provide since I doubt our insurance covers that. They also recommended public school when they found out we are homeschooling. I doubt I will take that to heart though given it was the Special Education Specialist on staff that was really pushing it. We will see though, I am open-minded anyways.
Anyways we will see what happens and post ongoing updates! Here's a pic I took of him playing in the waiting room. He loved the door on that toys and was very upset when we had to leave the waiting room. :) Thank goodness the other rooms all had fun toys with doors too!
Anyways we arrived in Peoria Monday afternoon and scoped out the Easter Seals clinic where we would be headed the next day. It was a little hard to find because the GPS was trying to take us to the Children's Hospital and the clinic was actually behind the hospital but a quick phone call straitened that out. We then scoped out a nearby hotel where we would hang out for the night. We took Little Guy to Ruby Tuesdays for dinner simply because I was highly impressed with their online allergy info. The wait staff was very helpful with that as well. They double-checked everything for us. We then headed back to the motel for the night. Little Guy played with his favorite pop-up toy in the motel and stayed up too late tossing and turning since the environment was different, but he did eventually go to sleep thank goodness.
Tuesday morning we got up bright and early, took advantage of the hotel's free breakfast and drove back over to the clinic. The staff there was wonderful. They were all very friendly and informative. Of course Little Guy decided to be on his absolute best behavior throughout so I was a bit worried they wouldn't see the whole picture. But thankfully we submitted video of his behavior at home and all of the info from his therapists were sent over, so all and all I think they got a good idea of what he is generally like. They questioned us, did a play-based assessment and went over all the observations from the therapists and videos and then had a conference with us giving us the overview of the diagnosis. They also gave us a folder full of resources and man I wish we lived closer because their clinic has tons of therapy opportunities that aren't available in our area. And then we were on our way. We should be receiving a more comprehensive report in about a month.
Considering that I have thought Little Guy has some sort of Autism since he was 11 months old, I wasn't remotely shocked at his diagnosis. Nor am I really sad. He is still the same Little Guy we know and love and he is so fun to play with and be around. We are already up to our eyeballs in therapy so that will be nothing new. We just had our suspicions confirmed and now we can accept it and move on with hopefully more therapy options to help him out
They did recommend that our speech therapists start working with pecs with him. Which is basically teaching him to use pictures to enhance his communication. Here is a good site on that for more information. http://autism.healingthresholds.com/therapy/picture-exchange-communication-system-pecs
They also recommended ABA therapy which I am hoping Early Intervention will provide since I doubt our insurance covers that. They also recommended public school when they found out we are homeschooling. I doubt I will take that to heart though given it was the Special Education Specialist on staff that was really pushing it. We will see though, I am open-minded anyways.
Anyways we will see what happens and post ongoing updates! Here's a pic I took of him playing in the waiting room. He loved the door on that toys and was very upset when we had to leave the waiting room. :) Thank goodness the other rooms all had fun toys with doors too!
Anyways a big thankyou goes out to Easter Seals Autism Clinic in Peoria! That place is really wonderful and their staff consists of some really amazing people!
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Getting ready for Autism Eval
Well we are getting ready and trying to make sure we have everything done and notes to take for Little Guys autism evaluation. Tomorrow we will head on up to Peoria, and stay the night so we can get there bright and early. He is going to see several specialists on Tuesday and I honestly can't tell ya all their titles at the moment. I was told we can skip the OT and Speech evaluations since he has been seeing therapists ongoing for that since he was 11 months old, so that will shorten the day a little bit. I am a little worried that they won't get a very accurate picture of him since the whole evaluation will happen in one day, but we are taking video and they will have the reports from the therapists he sees regularly so.......I guess we will just see how it goes. I have been looking up places to eat in the area trying to make sure I have any milk allergy info we might need for the trip. Honestly, I am super nervous and I really hope we come out of this with some answers of some sort.
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