What an ominous date to start my diary entries! Oh well, can’t be helped. I thought I’d best get on here while the Simpsons is on, after that the computer isn’t mine again until after bedtime.
We’ve had a busy couple of days. Yesterday we had our best ever sessions at Sensational Kids. Every second Thursday Beth has the day off school and we trek to Ormond for occupational and speech therapy. I used to take her to school for the morning but then it was hard to get anything out of her for her sessions so we now take Bill to school, Bridie to kinder and Minka for a walk at Birdslands in Belgrave. Then we drop Minka off to Grandma and Grandpas for the day and go off to Ormond. Grandma and Grandpa pick Bridie up from Kinder then after our session we drive back to school to pick Bill and a friend up. We drive back to Grandma and Grandpas, pick up Bridie and drop Beth off for a bounce on the trampoline in the back yard  while I take the boys and Bridie to the boy’s karate lessons. To quote my very amusing friend Clare : I used to be confused, now I’m not so sure!
Then it’s back to pick Beth and Minka up and pizzas for the night! For a while there we also had a lesson for the autistic kids at karate but Beth  just didn’t enjoy it and it really did make the day even bigger than usual (if that’s at all possible!)
Anyway, as I was saying, yesterdays session was especially good. The doctor had told us that we wouldn’t notice any difference in Beth with just the mercury detox so he either didn’t want to get our hopes up or it was just a co-incidence but either way she cooperated brilliantly and I was so proud of her. She did her occupational therapy where she often flits around the room as if she owns it, telling us in no uncertain terms what it is she wants to do. Yesterday she was really focussed and really seemed to be keen to do what was asked of her which was great. But it was in speech that she really excelled. I’m always amazed when we have a good session there, she really goes in speaking one way and when she learns the rule of the sentence or phrase she just gets it and goes with it. Yesterday Rod had her playing a game called Hullabaloo. It has various pads with pictures, shapes and colours and the annoying American voice tells you which one to move to. Rod was telling her to tell him where to put these pads by using words like on top of, underneath, next to etc etc. First she used the game pads, then he said she couldn’t do that anymore so she used either us or parts of the room and furniture. Well by the end of the session she was using two directions at a time. For example she’d say :I’ll put the yellow spaghetti in between mum and the slide and next to mum. It was just amazing to watch, she just got it.
Rod has also decided that for the last 15 minutes of our session and the first 15 minutes of the next session Beth and another child Eli would have a bit of a shared session. Beth seemed to really enjoy this as did Eli. It’s always nice to observe how Beth and other autistic kids are with each other, there’s always such an ease that they are what they are and they couldn’t really care less about what other kids would think are silly. I’m really looking forward to our next session in 2 weeks time.
