Student of the Week

In January, Charlie was picked to be the student of the week at his preschool.  He was so excited to make a poster to share with his classmates.  He sat with me at the computer going through all the pictures we had taken of him since the beginning of the year...  And picked out the ones that he wanted to include.  Then we printed them out, along with some pictures of his favorite things, and had fun assembling his poster.  Okay, I'll admit I had a lot of fun doing it too.  Is it weird that I'm actually excited for the day that he gets to start putting science projects together?

Charlie loves being in the spotlight and did a really good job at preschool all week.  January was also the month that there was finally an opening with an Occupational Therapist so that we could start doing some work on Charlie's sensory processing issues.  The turnaround was remarkable and nearly immediate.  For the first time in the three years we've done preschool activities, Charlie started doing consistently great.

He started looking like this on the way to preschool...

What a relief it must be to start to understand the signals that your body is sending you.  It was like a calm came over him, and he just knew that he could do a great job.

He even got a certificate for being able to say our phone number.

I noticed differences at home, too.  Among them, we started making real progress with our work at the piano.  Piano has become a great daily constant for Charlie this year.  It is a nice thing for us to work on together as well.  It is possible that I am biased (understatement) but I do think that he has a great musical ear.

As the month wore on, Charlie became more and more calm.  I could tell that the word that he lived in was just a little less frantic.  At that point, we still had a little over a month to wait for our chance to see the experts on autism.  I am so grateful that we were able to start working on things while we had to wait for his Autism Center appointment.  (Even if I occasionally feel frustrated that he wasn't seen in the heat of it all, because he does look less autistic now... I feel the need to advocate for the impact that continued therapies will have for him.)

I think Charlie was grateful too!