Blogging about life in Minnesota, raising our six kids with Down syndrome while battling Breast Cancer.

Be the kind of woman that when your feet hit the floor in the morning the devil says, "Oh shit! She's up!"

Friday, January 27, 2012

Therapy

In the next couple of weeks we will start assessments for private therapy services for Asher. We're going to hold off on speech/feeding until after his surgery, but PT and OT are a go! I'm anxious to get him started. He's so eager to try new things!

Today I brought him back to OT and ST with Axel, so he could get used to the environment a bit. He was very excited about OT (particularly the swings!) and he got to play in the ball pit with Axel. It was fun to see Axel take on the roll of big brother, helping Asher do stuff!




Later we went to speech and while Asher was more interested in looking out the window, he was also very willing to imitate several new signs.

Feeding therapy is going to be his most critical need. I'm pretty worried about what's going to happen when his tonsils come out. He's going to have all this space back there that he won't know what to do with, particularly where swallowing liquids is concerned.

Right now Axel goes to therapy on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. Angela was going at the same time but we just dropped it since it's interfering too much with after school sports. None of the therapists we need to see have open slots at that time so Asher will be going in the mornings. That means I will be making 8 trips to therapy every week. Well, that and I have to pick up Axel from school early in order to get him to his sessions. I'm just going to buy a cot to leave in a back room there so I can take naps. LOL

A couple people have asked me about school for him. I'm not even considering it at this moment. He is not even close to ready to detach from us and go to school. Not only that, but I'm still trying to get a handle for where he's at. Having said that, I reserve the right to change my mind on any given day! I have no idea what program he would be sent to if I put him into school this spring. If it's the same program Axel was in last year then no, I will homeschool him. We'll see how much sign language he picks up, and how his ABR results go, as to weather or not he'll qualify for the program Axel is in. But man, he is so physically small. Because his birthday is in October, if he started this year he'd be a kindergartener. If we wait until fall he'll be in 1st grade. He has a lot of learning to do between now and then. I haven't even started teaching him anything like colors or numbers. He's just not there yet. He's learning things like "Let's go bye bye!" and how a house works. We're doing little counting things like you would with any toddler "One, two, Threeeeeee" and stuff like that. Maybe now that he can see I can put a little more energy into learning other stuff.

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