There were times when milestones were few and far between for B-man. We've worked hard on certain things only to see no progress. This is beyond frustrating for everyone involved. At these times, we've found the best strategy has been to walk away, stop pressing the issue. Often times, B sneaks up on us. He just starts doing something that had seemed impossible or frustrating in the past.
Speaking was one of those things. B worked with an ECI (Early Childhood Intervention) Speech Therapist for 9 months. When I say worked, I mean WORKED. Like it was our job. All of us were frustrated by his lack of progress. When he aged out of ECI at 3 he had, maybe, 20 words. There was a lot of screaming and throwing things. B was frustrated because he couldn't communicate with us. We were frustrated that everything we were trying wasn't working. I bet that speech therapist was happy to see B-man age out.
He turned 3 in June, aged out of ECI, then had no therapy all summer. Right before schools started he had an explosion of language. His PPCD (preschool for children with disabilities) teachers were amazed at his language skills. They had seen his initial testing and expected a largely nonverbal little boy.
I want to celebrate B's hard earned milestones. Here are some that he's hit recently
- Riding a big wheel and a bike - holy miracle of muscle planning!
- Taking a shower - he used to scream bloody murder, nights are so much easier
- Dressing himself
- Safely playing away from adults
- Walking into school alone - this was big, we had no idea how he'd do going into school without Z. It does help that he gets to go in early and in the back since I'm an employee but it's still HUGE!
- Being able to sit in the gym in the morning and wait for school to start
- Telling us "PE makes me nervous" - labeling emotions! expressing emotions!
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