Conferences

Because the Hurricane changed things immensely in terms of school schedules, Colin's teacher and therapists have been setting up phone conferences to discuss progress that Colin has made so far in different areas.  While our communication is pretty good on a regular basis, it was really nice to spend a little time discussing different topics regarding this school year.  

Colin's speech therapist reported that he has been a bit "scoochy" and silly lately when it comes to working together.  It has only been the last week or two and coincidentally he is trying to fight off a cold when Daddy hasn't been around much, so we are hoping this was just a "short phase" that he will come out of soon.  He hasn't been unproductive, but I often receive status notes that say he needed "maximum cues" for production.  While we have all seen progress when it comes to communication, there are many things that he needs continued work on.  Some of the major things that she has been working on have been "wh" questions like "what" and "where".  She finds (as do we) that with maximum cues he will ultimately answer the question (ie: where does a hat go? A maximum cue would be, "Colin, a hat goes on our ___" and he will answer head).  I feel as though we have made progress here, but ideally we want him to answer head without needing the prompt.  We also want him to initiate more like instead of just saying "milk" or "eat" when he wants those things, we want him to say "I want milk" or "I want yogurt".  Colin has always been an observer and then one day shows what he knows, so I know that with time we will see progress with these things as well.  

Colin's teacher discussed how he is doing in her class and I always love getting glimpses into his day at school.  I really wish I could spend some time "watching" to see how his day goes, but don't we all?  We discussed different things about his day, like the fact he loves circle time and does really well coming up with the pointer when they work on days, numbers, letters, etc.  She said that he does well initiating which center he wants to work on and communicates where he wants to go or what he wants to do.  Behavior is always a concern of mine just because of how it's been with Kailey lately, however, she said that his only negative/inappropriate behavior has been poking his friends at circle as a way to get their attention.  She said it's obvious he isn't trying to hurt anyone but rather, get their attention and be silly so they have been working on "quiet hands".  We discussed how I feel about his low success rate in identifying colors (she already tried changing things around today) so we are all going to try a few things to make improvements here.  

I feel confident that there is progress so we will just continue to work with him as we always do to continue to move in the right direction.