Over the course of the past few months, we have seen a lot of changes in Colin. A lot of them are really positive while some of them are particularly challenging. We have been working on a lot of different things, most of which are social and behavioral, but also includes academic things as well.
We have seen a lot of nice progress with Colin and his fine motor skills. His interest level and time on task for activities such as coloring and cutting has increased greatly as his strength has improved. You can tell that this is easier for him in subtle ways like the way he holds a writing utensil and how hard he presses down while coloring and writing. He is also spending more time on tasks like lacing cards and picking up smaller items because it has become easier and he has more patience with it.
Gross motor activities have always been things that are more motivating to Colin and we have seen a lot of nice changes in the way in which he runs (and unfortunately/fortunately he has become so much faster). He is able to jump pretty high off the ground as well as from different heights and can now pedal pretty easily on his bike (Santa will be bringing a bigger bike for him). He currently loves baseball and can hit a ball that is pitched to him. He is also really interested in soccer and basketball as well.
Basketball season has begun at Monmouth so he was really excited to attend his first game again this year.
Another big area that we have seen a lot of progress is with Colin's speech. He is becoming more clear and easier to understand and it's exciting because he is able to string more words together now to make sentences. We've had some pretty funny conversations with him where it's hard not to laugh at what he is saying. The other night when Chris was working late (Colin has a hard time with that) I made the mistake of checking on him and Kailey. He popped up and said "I'm awake Mom" and so I tried to coax him back to sleep. He came walking out several times and I kept putting him back. However, after the umpteenth time of him coming out to see me, I let him stay knowing that Chris would be home shortly after. Here is a glimpse of our conversation...
We have seen nice progress with Colin's identification of numbers and letters (still struggling on a few lower case letters) and he's consistently counting up to 20. He is struggling a bit with counting specific items because he often skips over or clumps items together incorrectly but we are working in hand over hand to make sure he counts one item at a time. He has been learning his sight words that come home each week and so I've made some little books that he can read with family pictures and the words together.
Colin has become really independent which has both its positives and negatives. He wants to do a lot himself which I am really happy about and have forced myself to have a lot of patience with. However, sometimes this is a challenge in where and when he wants to exert his independence.
The biggest difficulty we are facing right now is Colin's behavior. He is having a hard time at school (we did have a meeting recently to work on this) and then a lot of the behaviors are coming home as well. This has been difficult for me because they are things we have never seen before. We are constantly working on them and I really hope that we see an improvement soon. We are also working on Colin's social skills because while his speech is improving, he is still learning how to appropriately communicate. These are things that need constant work...
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