Lamb 2 Update

Lamb 2 has made a lot of progress in 2014. I'll update some of his progress here.

Lamb 2 did well at his piano recital. The other parents of piano students commented on his confidence and concentration as compared to the December recital. He is taking piano lessons once a month this summer. We are asking him to practice daily. He is currently working on Jingle Bells. His progress in piano since Christmas has been amazing. Note names for both treble and bass clef are finally sticking with him.

Lamb 2 had lots of competition in his age group at the track meet but he still brought home 1 3rd place (200m) and 1 4th place (400m) ribbon. We were proud of his first track season. Track was easy for him after his OT exercises. We think track was helpful for OT and speech therapy too.

Lamb 2 can pronounce all his words correctly now so if that was the only issue he would graduate from speech therapy now. He made so much progress in articulation in the last few months! Because he was speaking correctly that encouraged Lamb 3 to speak correctly. After 4 years of speech therapy I'm so glad he has mastered articulation!

Lamb 2's other issue is not stuttering, but taking too many breaths. He has worked on this since we moved to ID with a little but not much progress. His speech therapist is recommending a break from speech therapy for 6 months to a year. During that break we are to see some other doctors including an ENT to rule out that there is not a physical problem to this breathing problem. I'm starting to put together the pieces of the puzzle and really do wonder if there is large tonsils or something. We have met our deductible this year, so more doctor visits for Lamb 2 like last fall. He would love a break from speech therapy especially because Lamb 3 is going to graduate from speech therapy. We need to see if anything comes out of the doctor visits or if he self improves this breathing pattern during this speech therapy break. At that point we'll decide if he continues speech therapy. Currently he is not aware that he does it so it is difficult to work with him on this.

The way I understand vision therapy is they work on parts of Lamb 2's vision problems one at a time and then put all the parts together and work on everything together at the end. Lamb 2 is currently working on stamina which is the last part he needs to work on. When he masters this then they will put it all together. He began in January and we expected 9 months of therapy. We are still expecting him to graduate from vision therapy this fall. He goes at 7:30am in the summer so the other Lambs can sleep in while he has therapy. Lamb 2 did great at therapy at 7:30 but Ewe was exhausted the rest of the day after that.

Lamb 2 has had the most difficult time at swim lessons of any of the Lambs. I am curious if he does better this year after vision therapy. He enjoys going to our pool if he can wear a life jacket. I am hoping this improves after swim lessons this year-perhaps not needing a life jacket at our local pool?

Lamb 2 had a lot of interruptions in school work due to so much therapy this year. He completed grade 2. He began Saxon Math 3 but has not finished the first of two books. We found out last summer that he can not take an academic break. This summer he is doing phonics, math, and handwriting. We will take breaks for swim lessons and vacation, but he needs to continue academics most days both to get caught up and to not forget what he has learned.

Lamb 2's "homework" from therapy has decreased a lot compared to the beginning of this year. He has a little VT exercises and no speech therapy games or exercises. His only OT exercises are his VT exercises. I'm not quite sure what to do after 4 years of trying to fit in a speech game daily! On top of that we don't have to do speech games with Lamb 3 either. We're going to have to plan time to play board and card games since we aren't required to do this any more. We'll also use the time to do music flash cards until he really knows all his piano notes.

It is amazing when I think of Lamb 2 last summer compared to now. He is not only taller but much more confident in so many areas. Last summer he never played catch with a ball with his brothers or the neighbor kids, this summer he organizes the game. Last summer we had several tantrums each day, now we sometimes have tears but not tantrums. We are so thankful to God for helping us find out what was wrong and to all his therapists that helped him.