Life as we know it!

It has been another challenging week with Joey; I am learning as I go that there seems to be more challenging days than non challenging ones. On Wednesday of this week at Joey's skills training at Fraser Joey did not cooperate very well; there was a student in observing our session and that completely threw Joey off; he did a lot of hand flapping, covering his eyes and over all just wanted to "get out of there" as he says often when he doesn't want to do something.

We had Joey's school conferences on Wednesday; Joey is doing well, he has started to play side by side with other kids in the classroom; where as two months ago he would not even do that. He loves circle time and also playing in the motor gym. We are actually considering kindergarten for Joey next year in The Communication Interaction Program (CIP)which is a center-based program for students with special needs, primarily providing services for students with autism spectrum disorder in grades K-12. The CIP program provides a small classroom environment along with access to the mainstream classroom. Students in the program receive individualized academic and social skills instruction, as well as support in speech and language, adapted physical education, and occupational therapy. Joey turns 5 on August 1st so he could stay in the pre-school Autism program again next year which is only 3 1/2 hours versus the kindergarten classroom which is all day; we are leaning towards kindergarten even though it is scary to even think about it at this point.

Joey will go to school all Summer through August and hopefully that will help to better prepare him for what is coming next. Developmentally Joey is at a 2 year age level so we all know that we have a long road in front of us with lots and lots of hard work.

HBO had a movie about Temple Grandin on last Saturday night; if you don't know much about her I suggest you take a look at her website: http://templegrandin.com/. Temple has Autism and through all of the challenges that she has faced she has a Ph. D and is a Proffesor of Animal Science at Colorado State University-Fort Collins. She is truly an inspiration.

I will leave you with one thought:
"Many autistics are told that they are broken, diseased, and dysfunctional. This is simply untrue. My wish for all autistics is that they will realize their self-worth and not believe the myth that they are someone that needs fixing."

I love you my Jo-Jo man!!!