At long last, I’m writing about Hope’s evaluation with Little Giant Steps. The evaluation did confirm several things we suspected were issues but also revealed something we wouldn’t have thought of. The actual program that was created for her has us doing several activities with her throughout the day to improve several different areas. I won’t be going into detail as to exactly what we are doing because these activities are proprietary in nature. I can though go into what was determined to be the areas that needed work and a very general description of what will be done.
The highest priority area that needs work in is regarding discipline. Anybody that has been around her for a period of time can tell you that though she can be compliant when she chooses to be, there are times when she will dig her heals in the sand and not budge, and it can be over the strangest issues. For example, during the evaluation, the evaluator wanted to observe her gross motor skills and asked Hope to crawl on the floor like a baby, then to move like a snake on the floor. She flat out refused. I know she can do this because she had done them at home the week before. I bought a BOZ board game and if you draw a blue outlined card, you have to act out the action and one of them is to crawl like a baby. She was also moving around like a snake on our floor and getting big giggles from Nate. Yet, for whatever reason she would not do it for the evaluator. So I told her if she didn’t do what was asked of her, she couldn’t have the strawberry dessert at the restaurant that night. No soap; wasn’t budging an inch. There were other times during the evaluation that she was not cooperative so the evaluator determined that Hope’s cooperation was vital to being able to do the program activities. After reviewing the videos of the floor exercises and massage stimulating activities, I could see why this is a highest priority area. In fact our evaluator said if we were unable to get anything else done, if we were able to see real progress in this area, it would be a successful trimester. Our next appt is Oct 5, so we hope to be able to do more than just have this area worked on.
Based on the information we provided in the documents we submitted, the evaluator was still able to determine that some of Hope’s gross motor functions are off. We will be doing a series of floor exercises with her to help develop the neural pathways needed to improve this area. Admittedly we have yet to get started on this portion of the program. Some of the floor exercises only require 1 person but the others require 2 people to help her and if I get down on the floor these days, it takes a crane to get me back up.
Another area where she is having problems in is related to her hands. She is very rough with her toys and books and this is because her hands have not developed the sense of light touch, so we will be doing some stimulating massages on her hands, arms, legs and feet. She also still has a tendency to not only put things in her mouth, but gnawing so much that the object gets damaged. We want to be able to break this habit before she gets in her adult teeth so that she won’t cause any damage to them. She also does have some food aversions related to their texture. There is a stimulating activity we will do to help her overcome this need to put things in her mouth. I can relate to this need for something in your mouth as I had to find something to substitute a cigarette when I quit smoking. Pen caps and lollipops were my usual choices and I never had to worry about someone swiping my pens at work because nobody wanted them. Can’t imagine why? J
We will also be doing a head massage to help with not only the oral need, but the hypersensitivity to sound, especially high pitched sounds and her hypersensitivity to having her hair brushed. If you were in the next room while brushing her hair, even without tangles, you would think I was torturing her.
One area we have known to be a problem is her auditory processing skills. We will be having her listening to classical music, Mozart to be exact, and books on CD. I purchased several audio books this past convention, so that was a providential purchase. We will also be doing some exercises to help her hear a list of items and be able to repeat that list back and in order.
One final area she will need some work on is regarding her vision. She has the eyes of a hawk and can spot crosses on top of buildings and water towers miles away and notice details that we would overlook, but she does tend to rely on her peripheral vision, especially when you are talking to her and when she is watching TV. We will be doing some visual exercises to help overcome this but this is considered to be a very low priority.
Following the evaluation, Bill and I were brought back into the evaluator’s office and she began to explain the program and what we needed to do. At that time we realized that when we submitted our paperwork we didn’t know about Faith’s condition, so we told the evaluator about Faith. It didn’t change the program but it will give us some grace in knowing that our family situation is understandably stressed.
So with that all said, we would appreciate prayers in the area of discipline for Hope. We have been very focused on this, especially the last 3 weeks, and of course there has been some strong resistance and bucking on her part. We need prayers for steadfastness and consistency.
