Good days

This week hasn’t been as bad as last week. Liam seems to have mellowed out a little the past couple days. He has not been picking at his teeth luckily. He still has his moments of anxiety and still wants his bath right when I get home from work. This must just be a down phase for him, but we’ll take it!

Jill’s parents got home from Florida Tuesday. They came over Wednesday night so Jill and I could attend the Autism Society of Greater Cleveland’s meeting. When Grandma and Grandpa arrived the boys were all excited to see them. Liam did something that really surprised me, and it was very touching. When Grandpa McCourt came in the boys were all saying hi and Liam said “I missed you Grandpa” as he hugged him. It surprised the hell out of me, and I think it even surprised Grandpa. I think we are truly blessed that Liam can at least communicate as well as he does verbally. Knowing how language is such a challenge for some Autistic children really makes hearing him say things like that even more meaningful and special.

We went to the meeting and heard therapists from Integrations Treatment Center speak. The vice president of ASGC and his wife took a class with them and were completely impressed. Jill and I were both just as impressed with their presentation, and the video clips they showed from their facility. The one thing we both were impressed with was that they offer training sessions in which they encourage parents to attend. The training they offer is covers the approach they use with autistic children. This was the first group we have seen that wants to teach parents what to do. Other agencies just offer their services at a cost. That’s fine, but seeing that we are with Liam more than anyone else, it would be great if we could learn how to best work with Liam. They have a class coming up and we are looking into having one of us attend it. We also are interested in their service of evaluating Liam’s needs. We think that will help give us some leverage with his school. We are going to suggest to the school’s program administrator send one or two teachers to Integrations for training. There is also a program coming up at Landerhaven in June that is excellent for teachers, therapists, and parents to attend. We are going to also present this to the administrator. I think it will be a huge benefit for them to attend.

Thursday Liam had his Adaptive Aquatics again. Jill said Miss Karen said this was by the far the best lesson he has had. Jill said she could see Liam really concentrating and working hard in the pool. Today’s lesson they really worked freestyle swimming. Liam really struggled with the kicking, arm movement, and turning his head to breathe. Miss Karen came up with a clever idea that really seemed to help. She had him hold a rubber rocket in his right hand and when he brought it over his shoulder he had to say “To infinity and beyond”. When he would say it, he had to have his head turned out of the water. It was really effective, but it will continue to take time. All these different muscle movements that need to take place in sequence is quite a challenge. We will see how this goes. Based on past performance, I’m sure Liam will do fine.