New Speech Therapy

Today Elise started her new speech therapy. I think she did great, but others may not agree. I'm possibly seeing the world through "rose-colored glasses". If you take away the 1/2 of the session where she was throwing fake trantrums, then she really did well. She seemed to majorly be testing how hard she really had to work. She signed more than I've ever seen her do and sometimes spontaneously said the words while signing them. I was really proud of her. I think the owner of the clinic was worried about how we'd handle hearing Elise scream like that, but, while I don't like to hear it, I'm sadly quite used to it and able to tune it out and focus on the positive. If I fell apart everytime Elise faced difficulty, I'd always be falling apart. That's not an option, so I deal with it and move on.

Yesterday, Elise was sick so I cancelled all of her sessions, including her old speech therapy. We visited the doctor and discovered it was just a cold, as I suspected. I explained that I'm overzealous about bringing Elise in because I hate having her miss out on therapy time. Her pediatrician totally understood and actually told me to call her if Elise is sick on a weekend because since she lives close by, she will try to see her then so that we can get her better quickly. She's been incredibly supportive about helping Elise. It's amazing the wonderful and supportive people we meet on this journey. In fact, they definitely outnumber the naysayers, but the naysayers really do hurt.

We survived these two incredibly busy days. I worked a couple of hours after the kids went to bed last night. I should work again tonight, but I don't feel like it. I scheduled an appointment with a surgeon for Monday. Hopefully, I can get the surgery done very soon so that I can recover and close the chapter on this gallbladder thing. It's just one more thing to deal with.

I started reading a new book last night titled "Healing the New Childhood Epidemics" by Dr. Kenneth Bock. I'm only in the beginning, but so far I really like it. I hope that I find some good ideas for helping Elise.

In spite of the 1/2 hour of screaming, I'm considering the new speech a success. I'm really excited to have Elise begin a play-based therapy focused program since she's becoming a bit robotic after learning only through ABA/DTT. While I easily see that she's needed ABA/DTT very much and continues to need it as her primary mode to learning, I think she's ready for a limited amount of self-guided treatments also.