It’s so important to look back! Sometimes you feel like you’re at a stand still, not making much progress or that it’s just going so slowly. When you look back and see, over time, all the progress there has been, it can give you that motivation again to keep on truckin’! Whether you’ve video taped when they were younger or have old IEP’s to look at or just even old pictures, look back, look at how far you’ve come!! Look at how far we’ve come!!
Click on the video below! And, wait until you see the video on the bottom…a blast from the past!:)
Click on the video below to see Abbey getting ready in the morning, right after we started using a picture schedule for her, before she had a communicating device. It made such a difference with her!
Today was a patience testing kind of day. It takes an extraordinary amount of patience to raise a child with autism and I have a lot of it, most of the time…but sometimes, I wonder, do I have enough??
She’s starting to understand more and more what she’s supposed to do and what she’s not, but sometimes the temptations are too much for her and there she goes into everything again, or not stopping to play outside to come in and go potty. She’ll go months and months doing great and then once she does it, seems like she does it over and over and over! She listens well….trick is, as long as I’m patient and firm, together! She can totally tell now when I’m getting frustrated, oh dear!
Abbey has made so much progress communicating and with so many of her really hard behaviors, but why does it seem like when they make great progress in one area, another area gets harder?
It seems like Abbey’s sensory world just gets completely out of control, out of this world crazy sometimes, and we’re seeing it now more than ever! Is it just because she’s so much bigger and older now? She has broken a very long list of things in her house like her window, holes in walls, our couch, her bed, more chairs than I can remember, just to name a few…and none of them when she was mad! She broke all of these things just rocking, bouncing, jumping around in big, huge movements. We have swings inside and out, exercise balls, stuff to chew on, sensory stuff all over our house for her to play with…but it’s just not enough. Will we be able to find something that is enough? I don’t know, but we’re working on it! We’re working on another outside trampoline as her inside one just doesn’t seem to do much for her…but, problem is, she’s so heavy and so rough on things, we need a really good, safe one…yes, expensive, just like everything Abbey needs and breaks! Well, more praying! AND, as we work on these really hard things, we’re just gonna keep on focusing and celebrating the great things that are happening, ’cause that’s what it’s all about!
Yes, Abbey’s loud and does a lot of odd looking things. She’s nonverbal and highly affected by autism. I know the things she does can be really embarrassing for her siblings sometimes. As they get older, I think it gets a bit easier. I’d like to think and I’d hope that her siblings would agree, though, that the Abbey has a lot to teach people. I think she’s taught us all a lot of life lessons and brought a lot of sunshine to our lives!
Ugh, sensory issues are so hard! Just when you think, just maybe, the days of picking tiny pieces of non-edible things out of their mouths is over, it’s not. The need obviously comes and goes, for Abbey anyway. Pica, or chewing on all those non-edible things, has always been a problem for Abbey. We go through so much Spry gum, it’s crazy!
We’re working on getting her a big trampoline again, realizing how much she really does need that outlet and that sensory input. Finding the sensory things that help them, can make such a difference and teaching them to learn to ask for those things is imperative!
Here’s Abbey trying to tell me something! The video of her is a bit hard to hear, sorry, should have turned up the volume on her iPad. I think you should be able to make it out, though.
She’s been doing a lot of talking lately…with her device, which has been very exciting! She uses Proloquo2Go to talk to us. And, she’s bringing it to us, which I explain in the video, is huge!
There are so many apps out there that we have tried with Abbey that we feel help calm her, and let her explore her creativity. She loves water, I mean really loves water, so Koi Pond has been a big hit of hers for a long time. There are now several like this, but this remains her favorite one.
So, click on the video below to see Abbey’s favorite calming and creative apps!
Ok, here’s another homeschooling post about my boys. Our DNA project turned out to be pretty hard for them…but how do we get through tough days? Humor!
What’s interesting is that, although, the type of humor is different, this works a lot of the time with Abbey too! She has a very different and unique sense of humor, as do my boys, but it gets us through some tough things and helps us have FUN together!!
We used to use a visual schedule for mornings and it worked great, first on her Dynavox, then on her iPad with Proloquo2Go. We haven’t had to use it in years, though, because she knows the routine and will even willingly do things out of order.
Some mornings are a bit hard to get her out of bed, she’ll pull the covers up over her head…but not usually for more than a few minutes, then she’s up. Some mornings, she wakes up at 4 or 5, leaving mom wanting to pull the covers up over her head! But, 99% of the time, she’s happy to get ready, knows just what to do (although still requires my help to do some of it) and is happy to go to school! Long gone are the days that I thought we’d never get out the door…and some mornings, we didn’t!
Click below to see US talking about it, ok, well, I’m doing all the talking, but Abbey obviously is agreeing with me!:)
What a champ Abbey was this morning! Nothing went the way it always does, routine went right out the window, but she went with the flow, no problem!
Of course routines are important for our kids for many reasons, teach them what they need to do and in what order, and to decrease their anxiety by knowing what is going to happen…but days like today happen! It’s important to mix it up sometimes so that when nothing goes as planned, they don’t fall apart!
abbeysvoice 