Beth getting a lift with our wonderful Speech Therapist Rod
Sorry I’ve been a bit slack the last week but there really hasn’t been much going on, at least as far as Beth is concerned.
The exciting news is that we’ve sold the house, yay! We didn’t get quite as much as we’d hoped for but it was on a no conditions contract which is hardly ever heard of, and a 30 day settlement. We think the people who bought it are planning to rent it out so hopefully we can just rent it back until our house is built. Hopefully we’ll hear sometime today, otherwise we’ll have to look this weekend. Either way it’s a relief!
Other than that we didn’t do anything earlier in the week. The kids are starting to get bored and I’m now completely over the lot of them! Mind you, at times like this, it’s Beth who is by far the easiest to look after. She is easily entertained with games and dvds and would quite happily do this all day if I let her. Bridie likes to do whatever Bill is doing which is fine for a while but starts to get on his nerves (understandably) and that’s when the fights start to happen. You can never tell who’s done what to who as if Bridie gets hurt she sometimes does it to herself to get Bill into trouble. Similarly Bill might hurt Bridie but then yell that she did it to him first or that they bumped heads and he’s hurt too. Roll on school!
We did get out to the movies again. Went to see Princess and the Frog which I can highly recommend. It had lots of Jazz music which was all original for the movie, just fabulous. It was a cartoon as opposed to a movie like Shrek or Up and I can say it’s one of the best kids movies I’ve seen in a long time. Oh, and I think the kids liked it too, though not as much as me!
Paul had the day off yesterday as Beth and I had Sensational Kids. Rod wanted to review our goals for this year. He had been going over his notes for 2009 and said that all the goals that we set Beth has passed with flying colours. Speech Therapy has by far been the reason for the most outstanding changes in Beth’s communication, it’s amazing how far she’s come in a year. I wish we had tried it earlier but of course the funding wasn’t there before. The 20 subsidised visits through Medicare have now run out, it’s awful that the decision to start a treatment should be based on money but unfortunately this is more often than not the case. In the UK once you have a diagnosis you get put into the ‘system’ and all of these therapies are accessible straight away. I’m not sure of the costing but it’s a much more streamlined system than here in Australia. Nearly all of the treatments and therapies that we have used with Beth has been through word of mouth or by me researching via the internet (sometimes a very dangerous tool) to try and find alternative ways to help her. Just imagine how much better kids of Beth’s age could have been if they had access to these services earlier in their formative years. Of course we wouldn’t have met Rod if we’d started early and he really is one of a kind.
Anyway, once again I’m off topic! Rod and I talked about the ‘How does your Engine Run” program again and we both agreed that it sounds perfect for Beth. It would teach her to recognise when her engine is running low or high and how to rev herself up or settle herself down. Rod suggested that we at home and also at school could have a board with various pictures on it as Beth is a very visual learner. She could choose which activity she wanted to do to make her ‘up’ or ‘down’. The benefit of pictures also would mean that there would only be certain things that she could chose, this would be a good thing at school because obviously she couldn’t choose bouncing on a trampoline there. I bought an introductory book on the program for the HAGS library. It used the example of a girl who was very sluggish to get going in class in the mornings. The teacher would get this girl to help carry boxes up to the office, thus booting her system and making her alert. She then could do her work in full alertness, therefore getting the best outcome. It’s something that we have thought about for a long time, seeing how ‘up’ and chatty Beth is after an activity that she’s enjoyed and how we can harness that. I must say that I’m pretty excited about this as it would give her control over how she is feeling.
It was a fairly quiet session though of course Beth got in a lift at the end as you can see from the above photo!
We’re off to rollerskating this morning! Not something that I’ve ever enjoyed but Beth has been asking for ages so I suppose you’ve got to do these things sometimes. I’ll let you know how we go. Thank goodness I’m off to the osteopath tomorrow!
