All roads lead to Rod’s shoulders

We’ve had another busy Thursday. I dropped Bill and Bridie off at school this morning and then we headed off to Frankston to see Richard Malter (flaxseed guy). We had an appointment at 10am. We walked in right on 10am and there was a lady who I have befriended on Facebook who had an appointment at 9am. Richard was running really late and Lou hadn’t even been in yet. It was lovely to meet her as she’s been reading my blog and has a big interest in kids with autism. I went to school with her cousin Michelle. (I thought I’d best put that in as I know that Michelle reads the blog!) After waiting for another hour the person behind me still hadn’t been in. We had Sensational Kids at 12.30 so I told Pauline on reception that I’d have to reschedule. Luckily for me the kindly gentleman offered to swap with us so the poor bugger had to wait for 2 hours!

Richard told me that we didn’t need to take the Neem tablets anymore but that there was still a virus that was masked by what the Neem was for. Her number that was 100 and should be 1 still has to come down considerably as it’s still at 80. The good news was that because I hadn’t noticed much of a change it meant that there was still a lot of room for improvement. He said it would have been worse if I hadn’t noticed improvement but the number had gotten as low as it could. I thought to myself that it would have been nicer still if there had been heaps of improvement and the number was still high, therefore making room for even more miraculous work. Of course I kept my gob shut at that one! Back to the flaxseed oil. I’m pretty sure that once the number has gotten to 1 that’ll be the end of our visits to flaxseed guy. I’m determined to stick it out until the end, I don’t want to try anything else until we have done everything we can. It just seems to be taking forever.

We then went off to Sensational Kids. I wasn’t in at all in Beth’s Occupational Therapy with Melinda so I’m not quite sure how she went there. Rod’s session was as entertaining as ever. Melinda came and got me and told me that Beth was already in with Rod. As I walked up the corridor Rod was bent over with Beth lying backwards over the top of him. She was already trying to climb him. I popped into the toilet only to come out hearing the words “your lumpy bits are big Rod.” Beth was feeling Rod’s muscles, trying to butter him up to carry her. It’s not the first time I’ve thought how if someone was listening at the door they’d wonder what was going on! She’s always telling him how big and strong he is.

Beth picked the pirate coin game that normally has 5 keys, you have to find the right key to open the treasure chest. She was a bit peeved that there was only 1 key but they still managed. Beth has an extraordinary memory and kept trying to get the chest open with her magic words. She used the ones used many many months ago which was abra cadabra cadabra but Rod told her it didn’t work. The point was that he was trying to get her to ask what the new magic word was. She did do this the first time and the chest was opened but then she got it wrong the second time and just kept repeating the words she thought were right. She didn’t grasp the concept of asking again and either yelled it or sang it or used the word in a funny accent. They did end up playing the game with a few twists. Rod might point to something and say “I will pick this cup up slowly.” He had will and wouldn’t written down and he pointed at Beth. She quickly picked up that this meant she had to say either “I wouldn’t pick up the cup slowly” or “You wouldn’t pick up the cup quickly.” She cottoned on well.

Rod then decided that he would get Beth to write a 3 sentence story about what they had done that session. Beth’s first sentence went like this, “First Rod wanted to pick me up to choose a game.” Well I burst out laughing! She seems to manage to get that into every conversation. The second sentence was about playing the pirate game. She kept starting the sentence with ‘2nd’ but Rod wanted her to start it with ‘then’. She didn’t seem to grasp the concept of it being a running story and did the same with the 3rd sentence, starting it with ‘3rd’. Rod and I both agreed that Beth’s spoken language was going really well and her grammar was great but writing it down was much more of a problem. I’m going to do some work with her at home with this. As we talked Beth climbed up on the table then turned around and plonked herself onto Rod’s shoulders. We got the hint!

About Sarah

Mother of an autistic child wanting to write about my personal experiences
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