CrazedPhotoMom

The time has come....school time, that is. The elementary school begins the 2007-2008 school year on Wednesday. Unfortunately, Nathaniel won't be starting until September 11th, due to a new pre-school teacher being hired yet again. Apparently within the next two weeks, we're going to get a call from said teacher to set up an "orientation" where I can take Nate in to meet and get acquainted with the new teacher. As much as it irritates and annoys me that he won't be starting with the rest of the school, it's nice that he'll be able to meet the new teacher before the first day of class.

In preparation for Nate's return to school, I pulled out his IEP for this year and started to review it. Whenever I read one of the IEP's, it tends to suck the life out of me. Seeing all the goals written there in black and white really makes you face how different he is than his peers and how much work this little guy has ahead of him. I look at his goals and think that maybe we've set them too high but then I look over his IEP from last year and remember thinking the same exact thing. And yet he reached and/or exceeded almost all the goals set before him on that one. Not only did he reach and/or exceed the goals put before him, but the teachers and therapists taught him so much more above and beyond. When we first put him in pre-school in May of 2006, he was barely speaking 1 or 2 works consistently. Although he still needs constant prompting, he now uses 4-5 word sentences consistently. Most recently, I've taught him "ask nicely" which will get me a "Can I have iced water please?" or "Can I have letters please?"

I've also been working with him on his scissor use. He has a very difficult time holding the scissors correctly and cutting. He tends to turn them sideways so I have to tell him repeatedly to turn his wrist so that his thumb if facing up. The problem with this menial task is that Nathaniel has absolutely no interest in it at all. I've tried making it fun but it doesn't really help much. He has improved since the beginning of the summer but it's VERY slow going.

We've also seen some of his sensory issues improve over the summer. For those of you who don't know, Nate has some sensory issues with textures. At the beginning of the year, you could NOT get him to touch or play with Playdoh. This summer, he requests to play with it often. He has a George Foreman Grill made for Playdoh and he loves it. He likes the sizzling sounds it makes and loves making "fries" with one of the attachments it comes with.

I've also brought out the fingerpaints a few times. Whenever I ask him if he wants to do it, he says "no" so I've changed my approach. I TELL him we're going to get out the fingerpaints and that, along with his sisters, they're going to draw some pictures. Thankfully, the girls love it so it encourages Nate to do it longer. A few weeks ago when we pulled it out, he amazingly did it for about 5-6 minutes. He didn't even ask for something to wipe his hands on for several minutes. Here are some pics of the kids fingerpainting!

One of the last things that the therapists/teachers were working on was the concept of in/on and under/over, etc. He really didn't have the hang of it before he left at the end of the year but a few weeks ago, I noticed that he seemed to have a pretty good grasp on some of it. We had been in Concord and as we were waiting to turn onto the highway, he said "under the bridge" and sure enough, we were under a bridge. Since then, he's also said stuff like "sand in the truck" so it's nice to know he's finally caught on to this.

His goals for this upcoming year are a continuation of what he's already been working on:

• Tripod grasp when holding a writing utensil - you have to constantly remind him to hold it the right way
• Gradually increasing his time of play with Playdoh and fingerpainting
• Scissor use - being able to cut a 5" line within 1/2"
• Putting on/Taking off outdoor clothing with minimal help
• Writing the uppercase letters
• Participating in non-preferred activities for 4 minutes with minimal prompting
• Better eye contact during story time (7 minutes where he pays attention to the book/teacher)
• Yes/No questions (asking him 10 yes/no questions and him getting 1/2 right)
• Increase his MLU to 2-5 words with 80% accuracy
• Getting him to use pronounds, prepositions and verbs
• Potty training

It's such a daunting list when you spell it out like that but I'm so hopeful that he'll do as well this year as he did last year. Some of the goals listed above, he's already working towards and I'm elated to say that he's completely potty trained!! After the first week, it really clicked with him and he's had VERY few accidents since then. We put him in a pullup at night but 99% of the time, he's dry when he wakes up. This past weekend, he even started showing some independence in going to the potty, only needing help with wiping and pulling up his pants.

So as it stands, we have 15 days and counting until school starts!!