"What does Brycen work on at home?"

As you read our posts do you ever ask yourself this question? I discuss what Brycen is working on at school and at therapy in my posts, but I realized I rarely talk about what activities we actually do at home. Of course he is a 4 yr old so he plays with trains, blocks, watches videos, plays outside (weather permitting...oh how much I dislike Iowa today because I can tell Brycen NEEDS to run off some energy!), looks at books, etc. But there is so much more that we focus on when doing things with Brycen.

There are specific things that our therapists have talked to us about working on with him through both speech and occupational therapy. We have a flexible sensory diet that we do with Brycen. A sensory diet is very common to use with children on the spectrum and other children that deal with Sensory Processing Disorder. Neurotypical children and adults can also experience sensory issues but a child with SPD or Autism usually experience a significant number of them that interferes into living life each day. With Brycen, we focus his sensory diet on getting out his energy through fine motor and gross motor activities, while also encouraging creativity, participation in various activities, and attention span. It probably sounds complex but it really isn't! Throughout the day, Brycen craves certain things (kinda like a pregnant woman craves certain foods and won't be happy/calm down until they have it!!) and activities. So in order to help him work through these feelings/cravings, we encourage various activities throughout the day. We have a mini-trampoline in our dining room for him to jump on; an exercise ball to let him lay on, roll on, bounce on; playdough and other things that feel different; blocks to stack and line up; tunnels to crawl through; various textured foods like crunchy and chewy, as well as the OT has suggested sweet, salty and sour; many other things that others may see as just typical toys but in my eyes there are ways we use them to work in therapy each day. The idea of a sensory diet is to use this technique so the unwanted behaviors like his jumping/screeching/hitting/throwing/spinning/flapping are decreased. On the other hand, there are some days where he's just going to stim (self-stimulate) and we just have to deal with it (seems to be one of THOSE days today).
So I wanted to give you an example of what activity I worked on with him this afternoon. He was very calm when arriving home from school and willingly laid down on the couch to watch his train video during rest time. As soon as 2:00 hit (rest time is over at 2), it's like an entirely different child erupted! He immediately went on an aggression path towards his sister after she woke up, he began throwing toys when I attempted to explain that hitting/pushing is not ok, he jumped and screeched in reponse to me wanting him to sit down in our version of his time-out, hit and slapped me which resulted in me feeling my blood pressure begin to rise. This type of behavior from him is typical for when he needs a structured activity and is craving something. Since he has now decided he enjoys coloring again, I thought I would take the opportunity to have him color and work on him using his machine/verbalizing the names of colors as he used them. Brycen has issues with his fine motor skills also so this gave me the opportunity to work on his grip while coloring and some joint pressure on his elbow to encourage him to ease off of how hard he presses on the paper. The pressure was not helping after the first couple minutes, so I just decided to let him do it and continue to break all of the colors as he did so because he obviously was needing that feeling it gives him.

After getting him started, I backed off to see how long he can keep his attention on the activity without me supervising so closely. I decided to check my email quick and shortly after I sat down at the computer, he came running over to me and pushed his paper in front of my face (literally about an inch away from my eyes!)! While most of you are thinking, "yep, kids like to show you what they made and are seeking praise as they tell you what they drew"...my blood pressure began rising in a completely different way than it did just 20 minutes before...out of joy and excitement. You see, children with Autism don't typically seek out praise for things they do as they don't understand that socialization part of showing something they did and wanting to discuss it. When Brycen was being evaluated almost 2 years ago, I recall reading a question similar to this over and over on all of the questionnaires "Does your child show you something either by pointing, leading you, or telling you about something?" At the time, I answered no to all of those questions because Brycen had NEVER brought something over to me to seek my input or just to show me. Brycen just recently started doing this again...which is something a typical 2 yr old does, so yes he is almost 3 years behind in this small yet significant developmental area that most parents don't give a second thought to.

Anyway, back to Brycen and bringing his paper over to me to show me...when I ooh'd and aaah'd over it, he had a huge smile on his face and screeched some more out of excitement. I asked him what color it was and he said "bu" which means "blue" one of the few sounds he has for colors! He did this 2 more times with my encouragement to either verbalize the color or to show me what color on his machine. He then walked back to the table, but immediately came back over to me where he had left his machine and found a page and pushed "more." I wasn't sure what he meant, so I told him that yes he could color more. He whined a little, pushed "more" again and then walked over to the stack of drawing paper and pointed while signing "more" at this time. Another huge accomplishment!!! He communicated to me appropriately a desire he had to get more paper as he was out of paper and wanted to color more. I picked him up and swung him around in a circle (which he LOVES) while saying "Yes Brycen..you told mommy you wanted more paper!" and he just laughed the whole time.

I just realized how lengthy this post is once again...imagine that:)  The whole point to this post is this is an example of something we do with him that focuses on so many different areas where he is delayed or is sensory seeking and how we spend a lot of our time with him.  While this activity ended very well (he is now happily watching a Dora video with Aubree so his body must be content with the sensory stuff that activity provided) and met all of the goals I was aiming for as well as more than I was expecting...it's not always that smooth.  Sometimes it's a guessing game on what he is craving or what will meet that craving, but this afternoon's activity was a success!  Here are the "pictures" that he drew as well during this marathon coloring activity...it looks like a lot but it really only takes him about 1-2 minutes for each one, so he can work through an entire stack of paper quite fast!

 

 I also included the pictures that Aubree drew during this time so everybody can see what she has been working on.  She's doing great at learning how to draw faces (she says it's either mommy, daddy, or Brycee but I really don't see the resemblance!!) and I'm so proud of her. 

I'm not sure if Brycen will ever get to the point of knowing how to draw these types of things so I try not to take for granted each developmental step she takes and give her lots of praise for her accomplishments as well!