Busy, busy, busy bee.

Well, I guess when I want to get things done, I should say I'm resting. :)

Warning: This is going to be a long post.

I've thought long and hard about the Son-Rise program. I love it. The principles are wonderful and the playroom is a great idea that has worked very well for us when we've been able to use it. I love their loving, accepting approach to autism and the way they focus on interaction skills in the therapy. I especially love the fact that they put the parent at the head of the program. My own experiences have proven to me that no one can get through to my kids more than those close to them, which means family then friends. Therapists offer great guidance at times but the day-to-day stuff still falls on my shoulders. And the Son-Rise program is, in my opinion, the best at helping my children overcome their delays.

That said, I have decided to no longer pursue setting up a full-time Son-Rise program. As wonderful as it is, we just don't have what we need to incorporate it like I want. We live in an area that has very few potential babysitters and those who would be great just don't have the time. So, there goes my time in the playroom. As for volunteers, I don't want the legal and financial hassle of creating a foundation or becoming part of an organization just so that I can ask college kids to come to my home to help my children grow.

And this bring me to my main reason for not doing this program. It's not really the room. Well, okay, it kind of is. We rent, and that means there are things we can and things we can't do to the room. I realized that I want the option of putting in a door with a window so I can see how things are going or setting up an intercom so that I can hear how things are going without distracting Rachel from the therapy. But it's more than this. I also want to be able to rip out the carpet and put in vinyl sheeting or laminate or something that can be easily cleaned. I want a house that looks nicer than the one we currently rent so that I won't feel we're running an amateur operation, because frankly that's the last impression I want to give. I want homey and warm, not sterile or run-down. Unfortunately, this is going to take a lot more work than just fixing up Rachel and Sarah's room. It's going to require a move and possibly buying a house. Since both are impossible at the moment, I'm putting it all on hold. The most I may try is a once a week playtime with Rachel since she has quite a few more social difficulties than Sarah.

Obviously, I'm still going to apply the basic principles.

So, the next question is, what will I do instead? Well, a long time ago, before we realized that Rachel's problems were bigger than speech, we bought a speech therapy program advocated by NATTHAN called Straight Talk by Marisa Lapish and Tom and Sherry Bushnell. We have both volumes. It has references to Christian scripture in it and advocates starting a therapy session with prayer, so if you're offended by that, just ignore it. Personally, I liked the spirituality they brought to the topic. Its core though is speech therapy and having been through private speech therapy and public (ECI) speech therapy I can say that this program does a pretty good job. Volume Two, Part One focuses on listening and creating an environment where language becomes vital. It also works on vocabulary on a "level" basis. Part Two includes developmental checklists so you'll know where your child is at age-wise in his/her speech, instructions and a form for a very nice comprehension test based on the previously mentioned checklists as well as instructions and forms for taking a language sample. Once all that is done instructions and a form are provided for daily speech therapy sessions.

Volume Two is very thorough when it comes to principles and forms. It's only weakness is a lack of suggested activities to help develop the areas mentioned in the checklists. We overcame that by looking for books like The New Language of Toys by Sue Schwartz and Joan E. Heller. Also, although they recommend making therapy part of the everyday schedule, the form and some of the instructions assume that you'll be pretty formal in most of your sessions, which may or may not be the case.

Anyway, I'm definitely going to try it again since it takes very little time out of the day to do if you decide to make it a "session" (about 15-30 min.) and even less if you incorporate the learning in an already planned activity. So, this past weekend I did all the evaluations and the sample. It was nice finally getting some stuff on paper again.

We will also be using Volume One of Straight Talk. Rachel has always had trouble with pronunciation but I didn't realize how bad it still was until I did a language sample over the weekend. It's bad enough I had to do the general overview test of speech sounds to find out which sounds she keeps missing/mispronouncing. It's a pretty long list. Next (i.e. tomorrow) comes the deeper tests on the individual sounds. Once again, from what I can see there's very little in the way of suggested activities; however, I'm sure we'll be able to find ways to teach the sounds just like we've found ways to teach more general topics.

(Note: for those who wonder how on earth a parent could not realize how badly their child mispronounces words 1) a parent expects some mistakes and 2) a parent learns to decipher a child's meaning from all sorts of gobblydegook. Just look at the parents of really young toddlers and watch them as they have what seems to be a pretty advanced conversation with a toddler who seems to be speaking gibberish. After a while of watching you'll realize the parent is just a very good translator.)

All this talk about struggles with pronunciation leads me to my final topic: a quick review of Building Bridges Through Sensory Integration by Ellen Yack, Paula Aquilla and Shirley Sutton.

Building Bridges is meant for parents, educators... heck, anyone else willing to spend the time reading it. The focus is autism and PDD or any child who has trouble processing sensory data. Part One gives a nice overview of terms and their definitions (so everyone's on the same page) as well as the theory of sensory integration and the role of the occupational therapist in your therapy plan. It's here that they also mention the Wilbarger Protocol which I found very intriguing even though they make it clear there's no scientific studies that say it's useful.

But it's Part Two that most parents will flip to immediately. That's where they talk about identifying sensory integration problems and also suggest strategies for dealing with various issues. They also have a really neat list of items you can make to help calm your child, like weighted vests (you'll have to find your own vest pattern... all they do is tell you how to modify it) and the weighted snake. This book is especially helpful for those whose children are very young up to early elementary school, possibly a few years beyond depending on the strategy.

All in all, I like this book a lot. It's given me some new insights and strategies as well as helped me figure out what to look for if I decide to get either of the girls into occupational therapy. I highly recommend it.

Finally, I'd like to give a quick nod to the publisher of this book (I have no affiliation whatsoever with them though I did live down the street from them at one point). Check it out: Future Horizons, Inc.

Update: Interaction, interaction, interaction.

Has it really been three months?

It's been a long three months. I found out I'm pregnant, we acquired a puppy, a close relative of mine gave birth and I was involved in the festivities and gifting, and this on top of homeschooling, therapy, and trying to figure out how to get our SR program off the ground, not to mention the daily grind of watching over 6 kids and helping out my husband.

It's been two years and we still don't have anything set up. To say I'm discouraged at this point is a bit of an understatement. So, for just this post, I'm going to rant a bit and indulge in a little self-pity. Feel free to ignore if you like. Following the rant I'll make some goals for summer.

I have had enough. I have been going full tilt since 2000 and eight years of never taking a break is more than enough to press a person to burnout. I haven't been able to get any volunteers (a fair number of calls but no takers) and I don't feel comfortable going through the university when we rent a house. I'd feel much more comfortable if we owned our house and could get it properly set up so the volunteers could be supervised in an adequate environment. Plus, there are a few repairs that need to be done before I even feel comfortable doing any sort of therapy in there (we recently fixed the blinds but the walls need to be painted and our landlord still hasn't fixed the closet door).

So, we've been doing therapy in a more informal way. Except it's getting more and more difficult to do that, especially with all the other recent draws on my time (puppy, pregnancy, etc.). Thank goodness we aren't just doing SR; we've also been using diet and nutrition and those aspects of our home-based program are going strong. In fact, I think a major reason Rachel and Sarah continue to grow is because we haven't focused all our attention on one therapy for them. SR is something I've been excited about ever since we first found out about it, but it's proving next to impossible to get the support we need for it.

Which brings me to my next topic. We haven't been able to find a babysitter. You'd think, with all the young moms in our area that maybe one or two might be willing to get a little extra cash. You know, bring the young ones and just watch five kids for an afternoon (2 hours) twice a week. It can't possibly be that hard. However, apparently when you use any number larger than 2 in reference to the number of children you would like someone to watch people just shrug and say it's too big a job.

It's not. When you have that many kids, they mostly amuse themselves. The only reason a parent is there is to make sure no one pokes their eye out.

Or are young mothers that overwhelmed by motherhood nowadays?

Granted, I've been staying mostly in my own church for this and occasionally talking to people at the university. So, maybe I need a more thorough plan to get our SR program going. I've already gotten an offer to attach our family to a larger group so that we will also be considered a non-profit organization... but the thought of all the legal hassles that might entail just makes me even more tired than before.

And that's what I feel the most right now. Tired. I'm too tired to write anymore, so I'll just go to the goals for this summer.

• Rest. That's a big one right there. Between rest and good food over the next two months, I might be ready for school to start again in August.
• Get the girls' room up to snuff. This means painting the walls and fixing the closet door, even if it means fixing it ourselves (I'd much rather the landlord fix it but you gotta do what you gotta do).
• After the room is in what I consider a therapy-conducive state, make a list of all the local churches and begin putting up ads for babysitters. Also, place ads in the local paper and at the local health food store. (If worse comes to worse there's a babysitting service that recently started up in our area... I might end up using that though I'm not sure if our budget can handle it).
• Here's the most important one. I need to figure out some low-energy way to create more cash flow. Blogging would be one way, but the problem is that the topics for the two blogs I have aren't something I feel comfortable turning into a cash flow site. And I'm not good enough at sewing yet to feel comfortable using that as a money-maker. So, for the next two months, I'm going to list my skills and see if I can't make an extra $500 a month starting in September. That's pretty reasonable, isn't it? Heck, even $100 would be nice. And before anyone thinks that my husband doesn't make enough and should make more, that isn't it. He has always worked very hard for this family and I don't want to take away from that. I just don't feel it's fair to him to shoulder the responsibility of bringing in all the income, especially when the extra we need is such a small amount. However, there's a reason I stated "low-energy" earlier. As I said before, I'm tired. I don't need a way of making money that will take up vast amounts of time I don't have.

And in the interest of making sure I rest, I think that will do it for goals this month. I will also try to post to this blog at least once a week, with a goal for each week in the various areas we're trying to improve so that I make sure we keep doing the SR program informally at the very least.

So, I open the floor. Any ideas on the above goals? And thanks for slogging through my rant. I promise I will do all in my power to make sure it's a long time before I feel the need again.

Oh, and I also got a sensory integration book and a music therapy program. The music therapy program seems to be a bit unnecessary at this point for Sarah, but I think it might really help Rachel who isn't quite as high functioning as her sister. And the sensory integration book will definitely help both of them. I'll review both next week.

Goal for this Week: Responding to unacceptable behaviors by slowing down my own behavior and responding quickly to acceptable behaviors. It's kind of like positive reinforcement except the reinforcement comes from seeing how people are much more likely to respond in the way they want if they behave in a socially acceptable way. Stimming is exempt from this.

Update: Sarah has stopped flapping her arms for her stim. She now has a phrase I can't understand that she chants. It doesn't happen more than a handful of times during the day and because I can't understand the phrase, I feel hesitant joining. So, for now, I'm just going to accept it and work on the above goal. Maybe next week.