Summer Vacation?!

I would love to say we have spent our Summer visiting Family and going on fun vacations. When in actuality we are spending a lot of time at appointments and learning a lot.

During the end of year teacher conferences Aidan's Teacher mentioned Sensory Integration Issues with Aidan. As with everything there are the all ranges in the spectrum.

Aidan is easily overwhelmed/overstimulated. We have weekly appointments to help him better react when having a hard time and to more readily accept and handle new/different situations. Thankfully this has shed some light on past experiences we had with Aidan and interactions with people and situations. I will spare major boring details if you want to know feel free to ask.

Logan began speech therapy in May/June. The evaluation resulted in him having the language of a 12-15 month old. We are lacking basic communication with him. We started using sign to help cover his basic needs. After some time with the Speech Pathologist we were referred for an Occupational Therapy Evaluation for possible Sensory Integration Issues.

Luckily, this is something we are now a little familiar with since Aidan is seeing an OT at the same practice.

Logan has the opposite of Aidan and appears to be under responsive to stimulation and "seek" sensory input. We only just started this and he did his second session this week. This is a slow process and an evaluation is an hour and half or so, answering questions and observing the child. About two weeks after this you receive a write up of what we reported and the OT saw.

Our OT has taken three weeks to write up the evaluation. Which we prefer. All of this is a process and a slow one. It seems we live in a day in age where people demand to have an answer/explanation right here and now. In this case a rush decision is not a good decision. We are not the most patient people however, whatever the outcome it makes no difference if we get it now or later. We feel an informed decision takes time. The OT told me that if Logan does not respond to the sessions well we need to look into other "avenues".

Luckily, he is doing well so far (again...2 full sessions) but we are strongly encouraged to get an evaluation from a developmental pediatrician prior to starting him in preschool. (Luckily, we were waiting to send him to preschool due to our lack of communication with him.) He has a number of "red flags" that we need to look into to make sure when it is time for preschool we know if he has any special needs and find a preschool that he will best benefit from. The bottom line is the "red flags" are consistent with autism.

This week that was a hard pill for us to swallow but would indeed explain a lot of our difficulties with him. This is just another challenge in life to teach us new things especially patience and Faith. We knew from the beginning that our Logan is here for a reason. However, nothing is known right now for sure and we are just working on finding what can make our everyday life a little more fluid.

If anyone has any recommendations of professionals who have been helpful to them or anyone they know we would GREATLY appreciate the information.

We are spending three separate times a week at the "therapy" office. I also am to work with Logan for 15 minutes a day on sign language, two times separate from meals on feeding therapy, and practicing something called The Wilbarger Brushing Protocol 6-12 times a day.

Aidan only needs brushing 4-6 times a day and at home therapies to mimic and complement the work done at his weekly sessions. (Logan too.)

Right now Andrew and I are exhausted and overwhelmed, but everything is what it is and we are fine with it. We are just working hard on making the changes in our routine to better tend to their needs.

(Note: Logan is showing a lot of improvement already, luckily the therapies for his two possible diagnoses overlap.)