From in-home therapy to pre-school

Since Little Miss was an infant I always knew something was different about her. She was a hard baby to deal with; constantly screaming, never happy, didn’t smile, didn’t make good eye contact, had problems with transitions, terrible separation anxiety, and much more. I worried that she was autistic. Why wouldn’t she calm down when I held her? Why did she constantly scream? These things didn’t make sense to me since my other children would stop crying and curl up in my arms and smile when I held them. It was as if she couldn’t feel me holding her even though I was. Something that really disturbed me was that as she got older she would bang her head and other body parts into objects; table, wall, furniture, and not seem to really feel it. It should have hurt enough to gather a response but it didn’t and she seemed to enjoy this behavior. Her pain tolerance seemed to be extremely high and that was the scariest part for me! When she was about 1 she grabbed my coffee cup and poured the entire cup of hot coffee down the front of her bare belly and chest and there was zero reaction. ZERO! She was beat red but was completely unfazed.

Since I had my first child back in 2001 we have been in a local program called Parents As Teachers, where an educational specialist would come to our home once every couple of months and play with my kids to test and encourage development. They do different games to see how they were doing with fine motor skills, gross motor skills, communication and so on and also teach us how to encourage these activities to help increase their developmental skills to an age appropriate level. For the past 3 years we have had an amazing educator that has been nothing but helpful, kind and encouraging to me and my children. It was her that told me about Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD) and how she thought that was the issue with Little Miss and my other two children. She referred me to another local program called First Steps to get an evaluation to test for Autism, SPD and other disorders. After our initial evaluations we learned that she was behind in most areas and would qualify for in-home therapies.

It started out that she would receive Speech Therapy and Developmental Therapy each, once a week for an hour. We have been fortunate enough to have the two best in our area which are: Shireen (Speech Therapist & co-author for The Parent Support Space) and April (Developmental Therapist and co-author for The Parent Support Space). After a while we were told that having Little Miss in Occupational Therapy might be good as well so after a couple of months we also started receiving in-home Occupational Therapy once a  week for an hour with Laura (Occupational Therapist & co-author of The Parent Support Space). We have had some amazing changes with Little Miss since the therapies began. She is saying more words without having to sign, doing slightly better with her separation anxiety (there still a lot of room for improvement in that area but  I’ll take what I can get.) and she has had enough sensory input that she now feels pain a little more normally on occasion but not on a regular basis. She does still have her meltdowns that never seem to end but we have noticed that her smaller meltdowns are shorter. She can now calm herself from short meltdowns by sucking her thumb and holding her favorite animal. The big meltdowns however, are still raging. The only thing that I have found that calms her during these meltdowns are me rocking her while holding her very very tight in my arms.

At the age of three First Steps graduates the child out of their program. This really has me nervous! She will be three in about six weeks and I’m nervous on how she will act since she is so extremely routine oriented. Even over the holidays she regressed a little since she was not on her normal schedule and missed some therapy appointments. We are currently going through more evaluations to see if she qualifies for our local Special Education Program to go to pre-school and receive therapies while there.

So here is the part I’m really worried about: Little Miss, as I said before, has bad separation anxiety! She goes everywhere with me; to do laundry, dishes, bathroom, shower, taking out the trash, etc. and so on. So much so that she does not enjoy doing kid activities like playing with her dolls, interacting with her siblings, spending time with her father or grandparents, and being alone. She is stuck to me like glue…super glue! She is my shadow, my lonely puppy, that little piece of gum that you can’t get off our shoe…she is my other half . I know that it has always hurt my husbands feelings that she is not close to him and we have tried to remedy the situation but to no avail. She is a mommy’s girl, period. She enjoys doing mommy things; cooking, cleaning, dishes, etc. Soo…my point…how is she going to do at school without me there? And more importantly how are the teachers going to deal with my child when she screams her blood curling scream (that never seems to end) while they have 20 other children in the class to look after, play with and take care of? How is she supposed to learn and interact if she is so attached to me that she has a major meltdown over me leaving her there each day? These are thoughts that I have each day that we get closer and closer to her birthday because if she qualifies for the services of Early/Special Education then she will start as soon as she has her birthday.

However, I have been assured that the teachers are familiar with this and will be fine. The first week, I’ve been told, will be the most difficult but been when she learns that she gets to play, have fun, interact with other children and most importantly be a kid, and that I will return after only a couple of hours, that she will be fine and actually look forward to her school days. I hope that they are correct. Will I be the crazy mom that stays outside the classroom out of eyesight to make sure she calms down? Or the mom that stays the entire time in the hallway just in case the teacher or my daughter needs me at some point? Hell yes! At least for the first couple of weeks until I know that she is ok there without throwing fits and having meltdowns that would make a howling banshee look like a quiet angel.

We will get through this. It will be good for her…and me. Yes, I am nervous for her but know that this transition from in-home therapies to pre-school will be fun, enjoyable and a wonderful learning experience…for both of us.