We had Sensational Kids this morning. Usually we do Thursday afternoons but we were asked to come this morning instead as there is something on there on Thursday. It was good to go in the morning actually, we set off straight from school and Beth was fresh and in good form. The only downside to it was that we had Speech before Occupational Therapy, usually it’s the other way around and Beth gets nicely revved up for her Speech session. Still, it went well.
Rod took Beth into the staff room today which we hadn’t done before. She had nothing to play with but Rod wanted her to use the whiteboard to do some writing. He asked Beth to write 2 sentences about family. The first one she wrote ” I have a Mum and a Dad and a brother and a sister and a Grandma and a Grandpa.” Rod explained that it’s best not to write ‘and’ and to use commas. Her next sentence she used this rule without being asked. It was ” I have a dog, a cat, a bird and a rabbit.” I love it when she works like that, she is told a rule and she goes with it. It’s amazing how quickly she picks things up when she has a formula to go by.
After these 2 sentences Rod asked Beth to write what she likes about her family. She wrote “My family all love each other.” Rod then gave her 3 alternatives for her forth sentence. She had 1)Â I ate an egg yesterday. 2) My family hate everything. 3) My family like to do things together. She found it hard to choose which one was ok. Beth seems to vague out when not sure of something and argues or just says something to shut us up. In the end she got there. We established that even though she may have eaten an egg, the rest of the sentences were about family and this didn’t say anything about the family. The second one was harder as it still had the word family in there. The problem with the second sentence is that there is one about love that she had written, therefore her family couldn’t hate everything. When Rod went through it all with her a second time she answered back the reasons why she had the last sentence as her choice and seemed to understand this.
After speech we went in to see ‘Whiskers’ the Occupational Therapist. She would rather we didn’t use her real name and as Beth calls her Whiskers due to her hair falling over her face, that’s what I’ll call her. She’s just amazing with Beth and picks up on things that I have no idea about. When we’ve done Occupational Therapy before, as with Speech, I’ve told them that they’re the professionals, they know what to look for so I’ll be guided by them. Both O/T’s that we’ve had before have really gone on what I’ve told them and I haven’t always found them to be much benefit. Whiskers is different, she explains why Beth is doing things and she videoed todays session, letting Beth video some of it to explain some of what she’s doing.
Today they concentrated more on the Alert program, or the ‘How does your engine run’ program. They looked at pictures in books and decided how the peoples engines were running. Beth filmed me and asked me how my engine was running. I was reading a magazine at the time and having a coffee so I explained that even though I was calm and quiet that in fact my engine was running just right. After the session Beth went into the big gym and Whiskers came in to observe how Beth regulated herself. She commented on the fact that Beth likes to hold her head to the side. She said it has to do with the blood going to her ears. She explained that to ground ourselves we usually just need to walk on our feet and our bodies do it for us. For kids like Beth the swinging and in her case twirling the swing around and around and back again is what she sought out to speed her up and make her feel good. She then also put her head to the side to accentuate this feeling. It was so interesting to talk to her as I’ve never thought of these things before.
We came home after getting McDonalds for lunch and then went off to swimming lessons. Beth did so well today, she did her freestyle and breathing on every 3rd arm, Caprice seemed really pleased as was I. I don’t know whether it had anything to do with Sensational Kids going so well but she’s a happy girl tonight.
