A good day

I've had two insanely excellent days in a row. Since I've shared on some of my bad days, I figured it's only fair that I shared on some of my good days.

Every single child has been excellent. Beyond excellent. Like unreal treatment sessions with every single child. I have managed behaviors smoothly, reinforced good a lot, and had TONS of new kids (with autism, change can bring out the worst behavior, not best). I've been able to laugh with the older kids and engage the younger ones. And pushed hard without the kids knowing all the time.

The child who transitions to the gym poorly transitioned well for me our first session, and laughed throughout it. A mom said that she's seen her son make a lot of progress since seeing me, after having a long plateau of no progress. I've modified activities (e.g. lite brite woooo) to facilitate grasp patterns and arm movements that I want, and have come up with compensatory strategies on a dime.

I've tricked kids into practicing letter formation. Instead of having kids write out all their letters to assess formation, I think that we'll have a game of hangman. Instead of having a child who "hated writing" copy a sentence or write a paragraph, we took turns adding a sentence to a story. You want to play that game completely unrelated to handwriting? Well, every time you draw a cross (a pre-writing shape), you get 5 swords for Pirate Poppers.

I've figured out who works well with heavy work at the END of the session, instead of applying a one-size-fits-all perspective (with heavy work before fine motor skills). All in all, its been good.

And just now I had a highly intelligent middle schooler learn to tie his shoes in his first session. He has been in therapy for years. I taught mom our strategy (that I made up on the spot after watching the boy struggle), and she said "that's the best suggestion that I've ever had anyone give."

The days are bound to come when every child is a bit wild and hard to handle. At least I know now that as an occupational therapist I have talents to put to use with kids.

That was my Monday and Tuesday!