Sharing recipes, crafts and frugal living, the challenges and triumphs of parenting a neurotypical child and a child on the Autism Spectrum. Yoga Instructor said goodbye to her nightly glass of Chardonnay to give up habits that were not serving her purpose in life! The CocktailMom name remains, however with a new focus on healthy and authentic living.

8/24/2010

Autism: Logan reads names circa 2007


This video is from 2007 when Logan was attending Frances Fuchs Early Learning Center. A public preschool that works with children who are developmentally and/or physically delayed. This was also during his pj phase. He went through a phase where he would only wear pajamas, all of time. I bought doubles of every spiderman and superman pajama set I could find.

I've posted another video from that time previously, you can view it here.

Logan was 4 when he went to this school, he had no previous preschool or daycare experience and so when we arrived for the placement testing it was a nightmare. They wanted him to sit at a little kid table and chair and he refused. They wouldn't let up which resulted into Logan going into a total meltdown, crawling under the table and crying, refusing to participate. The testing team wouldn't allow me to help in any way, they said it would interfere with the results of the testing. So I sat quietly biting the inside of my lip, on the verge of tears myself as I watched my child struggle with this environment and wonder if he will ever be "normal".
That was back in the beginning of the Autism journey. Before I read every Autism book I could get my hands on, before we started all the therapies (ST, OT, PT etc etc), before I realized that Logan's "normal" would be so much cooler than what I was scared of him becoming. Since Logan wouldn't participate in the testing they placed him in a class with children the same age who were non verbal. Logan's language at the time was delayed about 2 years but he was beyond non verbal and thankfully the teacher realized right away that he would be better off in a different classroom. Logan was the teacher's helper, taking care of the other kids and flourishing in that role. While in this class I realized that Logan was "reading" by memorizing the way the word looked. So using a magna doodle I would write words on it and teach Logan how to read the way his brain could comprehend. Later Jon and I created a video using the same idea to help Logan tackle his Kindergarten word list.
I wonder what this year will hold.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

I really enjoyed the video Gretchen. Thanks for sharing.

Anonymous said...

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Anonymous said...
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