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A few Olena updates...

She loves school. Enjoys and is pretty quick with spelling and reading. Not very patient with science and does not like math! That is everything I have managed to learn about her within 3 weeks. I have to admit it was a good feeling to know this about her so quickly. I know with her being in a regular class room I would have not figured this out for a while down the road. 1. I doubt the teacher would have enough one on one time to notice and 2. if the teacher did notice they probably wouldn't tell me until parent teacher conference in November. :)
Oh and today she counted to 100 without my help but she did use her number chart.

She started a new therapy about 2 months ago, therapeutic listening, and we have been very pleased with the results. She listens to a CD with a particular pair of headphones 1-2 times a day for 30 minutes. She does 1 CD for 2 weeks and then goes onto another one. The entire program takes about 12 weeks. We have just started CD #3 and in that time she has completely quite wetting the bed at night, which has been an ongoing problem for over 2 years now. She went from wetting the bed every night, to stopping in seriously one night. It just stopped!
We have also seen a huge improvement in her willingness to cuddle. She does not like to be held and snuggled - she has always been a bit uncomfortable with it which we knows stems from her RAD. Over the last 2 weeks she has been climbing on our laps and letting us hold/snuggle her for about 15 minutes.
These are two pretty big achievements for her! I am so thankful for our occupational therapist - We have a few more issues we are hoping to get a grip on and now I am pretty confident moving forward with the therapy. She is a big time noise maker. She tends to mock noises she hears in her environment, like the humming of the frig, a fan, animals, etc. It is a soothing thing for her to hear herself and the different pitches and tones that she makes helps her meet its sensory "craving". The music that she listens to in the CDs will help to meet these needs and sort of "rewire" the brain. She also has an obsession with sniffing things and people. Honestly I gave up on trying to fix issue years ago, I told the OT Miss Theresa it is just something we have grown use too. She looked at me kinda puzzled and said "well don't you think that sniffing people might be a cause for concern in a social situation when she is older?".......I had to stop and think for a minute - well Yeah I guess, if you put it that way. I felt so foolish and had to laugh at myself because truthfully it is a little wierd that my kid sniffs everyone and the fact that I got so use to it and that it almost became "normal" in my mind. Hey, there are much bigger issues to worry about in life right?

Comments

ArtworkByRuth said…
So glad things are going well. I love following your journey for these many years! We've looked at the Auditory Processing therapy for our bio son too. It's a bit pricy but glad to see someone else thinks it's worth it! God bless your continued journey.
Anonymous said…
I'm so glad to hear that things are going well. It's great that she's showing so much progress. I'm so happy that you are home schooling Olena...I know that you are Ana amazing teacher :)

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