Fourth Year On

And here we are, four years on and no update in a year.  Where are we this year?

An interesting question, as Fox is wrapping up his first year in school, at the Kidsability school.   Today we had a Transition meeting where a bunch of Fox’s current educators handed off information to his new ones, as we plan to send him into senior kindergarten at Edna Staebler Public School.  It was interesting, but Lisa felt that it seemed really early to be having the meeting, as there’s a lot to go through, and she’s worried they won’t be able to keep track of it all and remember the relevant bits when September comes around.  Maybe it’s my recent frustrations at work with having ill-defined requirements that change at the eleventh hour, but I actually don’t have reservations about that and am glad it’s out of the way now.  Hopefully this means that we’ll have an open dialogue back and forth for the next little while as things solidify.

No, my biggest worry is still whether or not Fox will be able to get anything positive out of the school experience at all, to be honest.  We observed him at the Kidsability school several times, and I have to say I’m not confident that he’s at the developmental level where he’ll be able to sit and attend on his own… yet we’re not sure if we’ll even get an educational assistant next year for him.  Now, there are some things going in our favour for this, though this is definitely a good news bad news sort of thing.  With his habit of putting just about anything in his mouth and his new behaviour of running away from the teachers in the halls, he’s more likely to get the support he pretty much requires.  Finding the right balance between instruction and socialization is going to be tough and it makes me anxious just thinking about it.

As you can imagine, there’s been a lot of changes over the last year.  Fox started at Kidsability school in September, and his IBI started up in October.  After some bumps in the road, we seem to have found a system that works for us with two junior therapists that we are happy with.

In December, Fox took some Audio Integration Therapy, which really seemed to calm him down at a time where he was really acting up.  It’s impossible to say for sure with all the variety of therapies that we do, but we think this was also around the time where he started to be more vocal again.

We have also been investigating the Musgatova method which works on integrating reflexes into the body as they are the basis of all development (according to this theory, in any case).  Lisa and I have both gone to a couple of workshops each, and this method seems so promising that we’re headed to a week long camp in the summer to get a crash course in it.

We’re continuing our work with Relationship Development Intervention and seeing some gains here as well.  When we look back at where he was at the beginning, we realize we’ve come a long way.  A long way yet to go to be sure, but I have to be grateful of how much farther ahead we’ve gotten.

Unfortunately, speech still eludes us.  I think I’m going to stop harping on it at this point, and just be happy when this hurdle is finally jumped!