I haven't updated you in months about our sweet Bear (our nickname for our youngest). (you can see his other posts explaining his development, from my early postings) He is doing very well and soon to age out of Early Intervention. He has come so far in 2 years of working with OT, PT, and Speech. He recently had his transition meeting from EI and we are praying about whether he will start a Preschool program. The only way to receive OT, PT, and ST is to go to Preschool. He will probably attend 2-3 days per week at 5 hours per day. Right now he receives 5 hours of therapy per week (Occupational Therapy, Physical Therapy, Speech Therapy, Feeding Specialist, Early Interventionist) On his recent testing, he scored 18-19 months developmentally and around 22 months for some areas. Bear will be 36 months in late December. He continues to amaze us and also continues to move forward and not regress in any area. He can now sign several words and says hi, ball, moo, off, open, ar for car, and ocks for socks. His diagnosis remains Sensory Disorder and nothing has come back abnormal from the Medical Doctors. There is three areas to Sensory disorder: Tactile, Vestibular, and Proprioseptive. I am not sure what each area means, but we do know Bear has Tactile Sensory disorder. He always had a hard time with table food and he would only eat pureed foods, even up to 6 months ago. He will gag and projectile vomit with the sight of shaving cream, glue sticks, bananas, paint, play-doh.............. After using the brushing program for this, he has eaten several bananas, taken to table food and feeding himself and also tolerating play-doh. The brushing program is fascinating. It looks like a nail brush and we were told to comb his extremities and then to do join compressions to the count of 10. This was to be done every 2 hours for 1 month. We made it three weeks (not done during sleeping hours) We now try to brush him 3x/day (if we remember)
So, if you remember, Bear had flu and pneumonia at 5 weeks old (Feb. 2008) and on day 3, he presented with really stiff extremities (arms and Legs) and the testing began. We went the medical route for 1 year, and now the therapists thinks this was from a Sensory disorder. It is very common for preemie babies (Bear was 4 weeks early) to get a sensory disorder under stressful circumstances. His Central Nervous system was not fully developed at that time. Thanks to my sister, Aunt Heather, we have started using the PECS System with Bear. This is a visual system with picture cards to help him and us know what he wants. This is mainly used with Autistic children, but not always.
Please be in prayer for our little guy and for us to know whether he should attend Preschool. In the later part of October he will be tested by the school to see if he qualifies for each service (OT, PT, Speech). If he qualifies, he can start preschool after Christmas break.
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