Congratulations, Brycen!!

Brycen has officially "graduated" from Occupational and Physical Therapy at the private clinic for his 5 year old skills this week!  Great news for him!  In Occupational Therapy, he has recently worked on fine motor skills in many areas, muscle tone in his arms, writing his entire name and his grip on the pencil, and identifying/writing his address & phone number.  During Physical Therapy over the last 9 months, he has accomplished learning how to pedal, steer, and used the brakes on his bike with training wheels, jumping on both feet, balancing and jumping on each individual foot, balance across a beam, kicking with each foot with aim, and a lot of other stuff.  While there are still some skills that other 5 yr olds can do that he can't, we have felt he has caught up enough to his peers that it was time to discharge him from these two therapies.  Brycen will continue with his three appts per week of private Speech Therapy as well as his Speech and Occupational Therapy at school. 

While this is great news for his development and for our home schedule (going from 8 therapy sessions per week down to 3 is a huge difference in time!), it still presents with some extra emotions for us.  The possibility for regression is high for children with Autism, and additionally for children who have already shown regression in their past development.  We aren't as worried about this while he is in school because so many of these skills are reinforced consistently throughout the day, but when summer comes it really worries us that he may "forget" some of these skills.  Luckily, we have the option to have him re-evaluated at any time if we would be concerned about any regression or when he turns 6 years old and any new skills for that age are not emerging on their own. 

Thank you to all of his therapists (and entire team!) over the last several years who have contributed so much to his progressing to this point!  Their care & obvious dedication to wanting to help Brycen achieve, and their continuous support to us as his parents are what made this possible.  We could NEVER have done it without them!