Monday, March 7, 2011

Speech and Occupational Therapy Update

A day of updates!! Finally have a few minutes to type. :)

Claire continues with two sessions of speech and feeding therapy a week.  She changed therapists in January to a lady who recently graduated from school.  My do I feel old!!!  Claire has taken to her and seemsspee to enjoy their time together.  As speech therapists get very little feeding therapy training in school, Jill is learning alot on the job.  Claire is doing better, but still struggles with using her tongue during eating as well as chewing completely and taking the small bites.  Claire loves to eat so it can be difficult to get her to slow down and practice her skills.
Claire's speech is progressing as well.  She has met the original goals of therapy set for her when she was evaluated in August.  This does not mean she is ready to "stop" speech therapy, rather that she has progressed and is now ready for some new goals.  As Claire's speech was so delayed we have a long road before we reach age appropriate abilities.  Some sounds may also prove to be harder for her secondary to the low muscle tone as described in the physical therapy update below.  It can be very difficult to determine what Claire is saying although other times it is crystal clear.  She loves to sing and can often be heard singing to herself as she plays.  It is so nice to hear her speaking that it is almost okay that it increases the noise level in the house. 

Claire has done very well in occupational therapy.  She LOVES her therapist and wishes she saw her everyday.  She just has OT once a week much to her dismay-I think it may be her favorite.  She is making great strides, and the therapist is amazed with how far she has come in the short time as well as how brave she is getting.  When Claire started she would not even get near the ball "pit"; now she jumps right in.  She was recently evaluated on her fine motor skills, and it was found that she did need assistance with those.  So the occupational therapist is now working on those tasks with her.  That will be an interesting area to watch.  Claire loves to do things with her hands, etc but she struggles with many things requiring muscles to move together like: dressing, scissors/cutting, writing/coloring.  And potty training is one adventure after another.  I think we will wait until summer to maybe, finally figure it out and become 100% potty trained.

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