Bad day at OT therapy, good at school.

Liam had a good day at school. Part of his routine now is to first take reams of paper down to the school office. Liam then joins the class in their activities. Jill has communicated to Liam’s teachers how swinging soothes and helps center him when he becomes anxious. They have been doing that lately and they believe that has helped him. Today after some of the first activities Liam started to become anxious and one of his teachers took him to the gym to swing. There he swung for while settled down. He then went back to class. The class then went outside to the playground, and Liam went right to the swings. So of course he got some more swinging in today than normal, but that’s fine, it helps him.

At home today Liam was pretty good. He still had moments with his brothers or different activities in which he would show sign of anxiety. One such example was at dinner. Brendan was putting his hands near Liam’s plate and Liam would get worked up very quick because Brendan’s hands were near. The next thing that happened was he dropped his fork on the floor and he started screaming and crying about dropping it. I picked up his fork and told him softly that he need not scream and that he just to ask us using his words to pick up his fork. Liam would then repeat what we asked him to say rather than scream and cry. We keep trying to emulate proper responses to him to help him learn how to respond.

Jill returned from Liam’s OT appointment and said it was not a good night. Liam would not even go into the room where he would swing and do different physical activities. This has been the 3rd week in a row in which Liam has not had a good OT appointment. The one thing Jill can think of is that the room in which Liam had OT is now in a new location. He had been taking OT in a temporary room during remodeling. Since they moved into the new room, Liam has not wanted to do physical OT therapy, only table activities like drawing, cutting, and playing with clay. When Liam would be prompted by the OT do to do things he would get very anxious and cry for mommy (who was sitting next to him). This would go on until he would settle down on his own and do the activity. Upon starting the next activity, the crying for mommy would start again. The OT recommended that Jill note his anxious behavior to his neurologist. Liam doesn’t have school Thursday, so we’ll see how he does at home.