Jam is currently 4.75 years old
So at today's therapy session, I got some good news and some bad news. And now have a dilemma.
I'm a 'bad news first' kind of girl, so here goes...
The bad news is that Miss S, the occupational therapist Jam has been seeing since being diagnosed over two years ago, is closing her private practice and moving across the country. The end of July is the end of therapy with Miss S.
Super sucky for us. Super awesome for her. She's spent 30 years in her field and wants to do something new. And she deserves it. And I'm genuinely very happy for her.
Still...
I was really hoping she would be around when it came time for my sweet little dyspraxic, dysgraphic, left-handed boy to learn handwriting. Because, due to my own dyspraxia and crazy spatial issues, I'm not sure how a strongly right-handed person such as myself is going to be able to do it. Thankfully, it's a little ways off.
The good news, on the other hand, is that I finally got a small sliver of validation for the work I've done in developing Jam's new motor skills-focused therapy strategy. Jam's been doing really well and making huge progress on so many fronts over the past year. And part of that strategy was to drop him out of preschool. Not a popular decision with some, including Miss S, who is a strong proponent of early education for social skills development, especially for special needs kids.
Given his dyspraxia and SPD, the problem for us was twofold: 1) Jam needs a lot of downtime to operate well and, with his new schedule, there wasn't enough time for everything, and 2) he'd already been experiencing high anxiety and stress in preschool settings over the past two years. And that high anxiety and stress would carry itself over into everything.
So, for me, it wasn't a hard decision. School had to go for now so that maybe he could handle and enjoy it more in the future.
And today Miss S. told me she thought I'd made a really smart decision a year ago in pulling him from school. That she saw the results that came from reducing his anxiety load and allowing him to spend more of his energy on learning to use his brain and body. Yeah!
And now for the dilemma.
Being the awesome OT that she is, she's using the next two months evaluating and placing her clients. Finding them new, well-matched services for their needs. So, of course, she asked me if I wanted referrals for two therapists, in particular, she felt would work well with Jam.
And I hesitated. Because I'm not sure, at this point, it'd be worth continuing with a new therapist. Or... not that it wouldn't be worth it, but that we could spend our limited supply of time and energy trying something else beneficial.
So I took the referral contact info and, waiting lists in this city being what they are, I should probably figure something out soon.
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