Please contact your local senator today! The autism bill has one last chance tomorrow to make its way through the senate, please let them know why you support this bill. Premiums will go up less than 1 % but the overall life long savings is huge due to the advancement that can be made in this kids with early intervention, they will require less services from the staet when they are adults. Call, email, do whatever you can. PLEASE! I cannot begin to tell you the emotional, physical, and financial burden we've had to deal with because of the lack of insurance coverage. We need your help!

We worked quite a bit with TYler this weekend on using writing utensils. We looked for creative ways to get him interested. A friend loaned us a stylus with a sponge tip that can be used on the IPAD. Attached is a picture of Tyler which shows him using it. one of his goals on his IEP is to write a few letters. I'm thinking if I cna get him to master this skill with electronics where he is motivatated, we can transfer it over to pencil and paper. I Also puleld back out an old leap frog toy where you draw shapes, he still needs help but he's very motivated, keeps bringing it to me to play with him. In general, he was very much a mama's boy over this Thanksgiving break.

Gotta go, please call and advocate for insurance.

11/23/10

Here is some more info on Tyler's goals for this year:

Goal: Improve visual-fine motor skills to increase independence and participation in classroom activities as measured by progress int eh following objectives:
1. Tyler will trace TLE using a small piece of crayon
2. With sciossors (left handed), Tyler will cut a 2" line independently

Goal: will increase independence and participation in activities of daily living, self-care as mewasured progress on the following objectives:
1. Tyler will stay dry all day
2. Tyler wil complete arrival and departure routines

Goal: Tyler will improve his social behavior and play skills:
1. Tyler will follow a peer and imiate their behavior
2. Tyler will make requests to peers
3. Tyler will respond to request by peers.
4. Tyler will initiate a social bid to a peer by giving them an object or by using a communicative gesture (tapping on shoulder, taking hand, using voice output communication).

To improve listener responder skills:
1. Tyler will identify two compontent noun-verbal and verb-noun combinations
2. Tyler will follow directions to "go get" and to "give to" various people and objects in his environment

Goal: Tyler will improve expressive communication:
1. Tyler will use voice output communication or PECs to make requests during activities through his day.
2. Tyler will use voice output communication or PECs to respond to questions, a) what b) where c) who
3. Tyler will use voice output communication or PECs to make choices/requests, to respond to questions, adn to indicate he wants a turn during group and paired activities.
4. TYler will produce sounds within his repertoire on command, imiate vowel/consonant sounds, and ebprompted to produce word approxmiations.

Goal: Tyler will improve his pre-academic skills related to reading and mathmatics
1. Tyler will answer questions or use phrases related to a story.
2. Tyler will sequnce three pictures to retell a simple story
3. Tyelr will improve his numerical concept developmetn as demonstrated by giving a requested number fo items from a group of ten/telling how many items are in a group up to 10.


He has lots of work to do :)

11/21/2010

I really wish I had more time to update the blog. So many good things are going on and I just can't find time to make updates.

Tyler is fantastic lately, he's trying new foods, making all kinds of sounds on demand, and thriving in school. He's really a delight to be around lately.

In terms of speech, I swear he said the first part of "uh, oh" yesterday. He'll say Ba ba ba ba on command. I spent $80 dollars last year on an advocate to have just one consonant sound be added to his IEP. Now anytime you ask, he'll say it, he'll also say mmmmmm and ma ma mam and then point at me. Yes my heart melts each time. He'll say dada sometimes too. He knows who we all are.

I am so thankful for our IPAD, it really helped open up a lot of people's eyes as to Tyler's capabilities and it also has become family member in terms of helping Tyler get through stressful situations like grocery stores, doctors, restaurant, etc. Oh speaking of which, we know longer have to put Tyler in a higher chair at a restaurant! Previously we could not keep him sitting if he wasn't in a chair but now we can get a booth and he'll sit still. As soon as he stands up as soon as I say, sit down, he does. He's really doing great. back to the ipad, i occasionally take the boys to the gym with me as t hey have a fantastic child care facility, and one girl who works there on the weekends knows Tyler because she worked at Splash camp a few years ago, she's getting her masters in autism. Anyway, one time when I was taking the boys in, Tyler was a bit resistant. I asked Ben if anything happend last time they were there ( I love Ben for being able to talk for Tyler!!!) and he said Tyler got upset that they wouldn't let him play on the computer. So I thought, I'll show them... next time we went in, Tyler brought his IPAD with him so they could see all that he's capable of. they were blown away. In the time it took me to go up and pay for the kids and come back they were already asking me a bunch of questinos about it. My response...just let Ty show you!

He's been doing good in speech too, Grandpa takes him each Monday, THANK YOU GRANDPA! Steve started a new job and thanks to layoffs, I'm doing the job of 4 ppl so we are so strapped for time and then the commute and both boys being on opposite sides of Ann Arbor, well we are just really running thing so Grandpa is a life saver. Anyway, speech has really noticed when Tyler does and does not have his B12 shots! Felt bad last week, we both tried the night before and the morning of speech to get him his overdue shot but the little bugger is on to us. You have to remember, he's had these shots since he was 18 months old. We tried the suckers but didn't see the same effects and we also don' t get the same effects through oral medication so shots it is. Oh and can't remember if i mentioned or not but we found an amazing pediatrician who wrote a script for music therapy (meaning flex spending can be used) and for B12 shots. very very rare for main stream pediatricians to do this, apprently I made a very good argument. nad he was great with boys. Really followed Tyler around during the check up and got into whatever position he needed to, to check the ears, heart, etc. And was patient with us finding ways to help Tyler through it. Ty hates his ears touched let alone someone pulling on them to look inside. Doc was so patient and took all the time ijn the world with us, he's phenominal!

Oh back to shots, so speech notices a difference when he does and doesn't have them. We used to give them around bath time bu tthen he started screaming anytime the water was running, to this day we still have to bathe him in the other bathroom, tried it at dinner but anytime his pantws are pulled down he freaks and then we'd sometime sneak it in at diaper which comes our next problem. Tyler already has a bit of issue with his diaper being off and hands wandering but when he thinks a shot is coming it's holy hell war to get him cleaned up. Found myself the other day negatively reinforcing something I should have been positively reinforcing ( on the potty). Not fun and a long not pretty story so I'll refrain from sharing, we'd all be happy giving up those damn expensive pain in the ass (literally) shots but when even therapists are noticing a difference, we must keep them.

OK onto IEP. This year was so much different than last year. I felt i had to pull tooth and nail to get them to recognize Tyler's skills and capabilities and this year, completley differnet! Tyler now has a communication device at school! We had an AT mtg a few backs that was great, so many ppl vying for Ty. He's blowing through his goals and they put new goals for the device in his IEP (unheard of last year) and he's already starting them. Already categorizing, like being able to put an Orange in a fruit category. In fact he had to go through his 3 year assessment for reevaluation of service and they had his PECS book and his Dynavox there in case he wanted to communicate and during the free play part of the ADOS test he looked around and didn't see toys he was interested in so he want to his dynavox scrolled through multiple pages to find his gears and made the sentence I want gears... at which piont his teacher and the evaluator said they had to get him his gears since he was so smart to use his new device to ask for them. Everyone says how smart he is and he just flies through the technology that they give him. I'm really excitged abou this future potential.

oh and in case i didn't mention this before, he received a grant for music threapy! We'll start next semester. We also are goign to hire a private music therapist and will have a mtg soon to just get to know eachother essentially. We hope our lives will slow down a bit late next winter when we can get this up and running on a weekly basis.

I'll write more later on his specific IEP goals but just know that he's doing phenominal!