Friday, January 27, 2012

Educational OT

Ayden Jane has had her OT needs taken care of through her PT.  Many kids with PWS have both OT and PT from a very early age, but Ayden Jane's fine motor skills were not really behind and Jen, our PT is also OT trained.  The biggest OT things we have needed in the past were sensory issues and Jen still serves those well.  I have been thinking the other day though, that Ayden Jane is ready to really up the time we spend on OT.  Not so much stringing beads or doing buttons and zippers, but school stuff.  She is getting a good foundation with her letters and numbers, but writing is just not going to magically happen.

I asked Jen about it Wed. during PT.  She agreed that it is something Ayden Jane is just about ready for.  My plan is to check into the process to get OT on Ayden Jane's IEP services for school next year.  So far we only do speech through the school.  If there are evaluations or things we need to do first, I would like to get them done before we go to the IEP meeting.  If need be, Jen can give an eval to support the need.

Basically, I feel like many kids learn there letters and numbers while writing them.  Ayden Jane gets frustrated trying to write them now so she just does not get the practice.  It is too much for her little neurological system to concentrate on the act of writing: the feel of the pencil, the muscles to fire, how hard to push down, how tight grip, where to move it...  I believe AJ will have to get the cognitive piece of the letters and numbers down quite well and then tackle the writing piece.

Of course, an Ipad would be awesome for teaching some of those things without such effort.  Watching what Jen had her doing with hers for a few minutes at the end of PT (after she has totally worn out AJ) was amazing. The cognitive processing...  Gary and I talked about it afterwards and we have sort of 'wished' for one before, but we are now committed to making it happen.

Next week I will get on the ball and find out what I need/can do to make the OT happen for next year.

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