Life is Good!

It’s a great morning! I had a “normal” night’s sleep for the first time in weeks and I feel almost giddy. Ds11 (autistic, nonverbal, moderate MR) has major sleep issues and for about the last three weeks I have been up until around 2am with him and then back up in the morning at around 7 with ds12 (high functioning autistic) to get him going with his morning routine. However, yesterday ds11 was up around 5am and therefore after struggling with him trying to sneak in a nap all day yesterday was out like a light by 10:30 last night. He is up already so maybe there is hope for me in getting another good night before he gets off schedule again.

 Yesterday was kind of an off day around here. We started using the workbox system for ds12’s homeschool work a couple of months ago and it has been working wonders for him. He knows that he has to complete what is in his boxes and he can see the light at the end of the tunnel when he is done. Yesterday he seemed a little off. I think it is probably a combination of spring allergies and some social issues that have been bothering him with the neighborhood kids. He did finish all of his work though which I could tell was a struggle for him because he was really off.

We started our second lapbook yesterday. We did our first one for St. Patrick’s Day and decided we really enjoyed it so know we are working on one on the middle Ages. Yesterday we worked on some reading and a mini-book on the Medieval Medicine which is just kind of scary. We should all be very thankful for modern medicine. It has its faults also but it definitely a major improvement from the past.

I do mostly floortime with ds11. He struggles greatly with communication of any type so that is always our primary goal with him. He does a lot of back and forth repeating of sounds with me now so that is encouraging. He was in public school up until he was 7 and they kept starting things with him and then would give up on him so he still struggles with trust. His last year there they completely dropped him from speech because they said he just wasn’t “getting it”. He can bring me something or take me to something he wants but he hasn’t had any success thus far with picture communication. We have tried signing with him also which he is interested in but does not seem to be able to grasp coordinating his fingers to make the signs. His receptive language is gotten a lot better in the last couple of years though and his repeating of sounds makes me think he is starting to grasp the fact that his own voice is a meaningful source of communication. It is a lot of baby steps with him and I frequently have to look back to realize just how far we have really come. He is such a blessing from God to us regardless of how independent he ever has. He teaches us so much in caring for him every day!

I think I am going to have to wrap this up for today. I am getting dangerously close to the bottom of my coffee cup and I still need to get ds12s workboxes set up. So until later… have a blessed day!