Oh My Gosch...

We had our first session with Aubrey's new occupational therapist(OT) at Children's Hospital today. IT WAS AWESOME!

First let me step back and give you snap shot of what Aubrey has been doing in regards to therapy. She's been doing a mix of OT, physical therapy(PT), and speech therapy for 1 session a week since this January via the state's early intervention program. The early intervention program focuses on using the natural environment of the child's home and daycare to help achieve the desired goals. They do a great job providing techniques and ideas that we can do with Aubrey to help her fine tune her gross-motor, fine-motor and communication skills.

So far the main focus has been on PT and we only see the OT maybe 1 or 2 times a month at the most and the SPL only 3 times total. We've had a great experience - but thought Aubrey would benefit even more if we took her to an out-patient facility that would have more equipment to use. So we've been on a waiting list to get into the program at Children's Hospital and just got in.(We're still on the wait list for speech/communication therapy.)

Anyway - starting next week Aubrey will have 3 separate therapy sessions: 1 with early intervention; 1 with Children's hospital PT and 1 with Children's hospital OT. Hopefully it will be beneficial and won't become overload for her. You never know what's too much or not enough. I guess if she keeps making progress and is still engaged and liking it - we'll keep the therapies going.

Okay - so back to today's great session - the real reason for the post.

Our main goals in OT are finding ways to calm and "organize" Aubrey so she can focus on one task at a time and to work on fine motor skills such as pointing, cause-and-effect play, and the like. Aubrey has a huge oral sensory need. She is constantly seeking things to put in her mouth and chew on. Over the last few months - her sippy cup has become her favorite item. She uses it not only to drink but to chew on the mouth piece to soothe her. At home and especially in past therapy sessions it is sometimes the only thing that keeps her happy and calm. It's becoming too much and she is over-using the cup and it's becoming a security blanket. The problem with a sippy cup - - you can't really cut that one out of the routine all together - - Aubrey needs to drink! It's been very hard to determine when she is really thirsty or when she just wants to drink/chew on the cup for some soothing.

We're experimenting with different tools to provide this for her without using the sippy cup. So today the therapist brought out a nuk brush for Aubrey to chew on while we played with toys to help calm her down. It worked really well through out the entire session.

Then it really got good when Aubrey got to sit on the therapeutic swing. The swaying kept her more calm so she could tend to the activity of putting things in and out of a bucket. She's fabulous at getting things out and dumping the bucket over.....we're still working on putting things back in! We'd continue to use the Nuk brush as her "chewing" reward after the activity was complete. It was so nice that she was using this vs the sippy cup.

After the swing we came down and played with a pop-up cause and effect toy. No interest in it and she was fidgeting all over. Then the OT laid a vibrating, heavy tube around her and just like that she sat still and humored us by shutting one of the pop-up animals. Now she still didn't care too much about the toy - but she was sitting still for at leat 1 minute. If you've had the pleasure to see Aubrey in person - you know that this is a BIG deal!!

Aubrey's favorite part of the session was swinging in what looked like a small mesh hammock. I'll have to take pictures of this next week. Anyway- Aubrey was laughing so hard! Her laugh is the most precious sound in the world. When you have a non-verbal child - - the miracle of this noise is un-comparable!!!

The last toy we played with was probably the best. It was one of those toy pianos with four notes. We have a similar one at home that she shows no interest in at all. Well the OT had attached different textures to each key. (picture coming next week of this too!) One key had a small piece of carpet attached to it. The other had bumpy dried glue on it, there was one with a row of garbage ties,and another with a flat piece of felt. I've never seen Aubrey make as much noise on a musical toy ever!!!! She was never motivated by the actual sound of hitting a red key - - she however loved feeling the carpet over and over again - so we heard that note a lot!

Aubrey only fussed for her sippy cup two times the whole hour - -and she drank from it and then threw it down when she was done and then we played more. This was so nice to see.
It was a great session!!

Well - that's all for now - lunch break is over and I have to get back to work!