Ariana's Posts

Picturing The Path Of Increasing A Few Functional Skills In Public Spaces

Practicing sitting calmly in a library in Goodyear, we sat for more than 20 minutes, this is only the second time we’ve done therapy work at this location. Photo by Hannah

My loved ones, I am going to keep this week’s post pretty short. I’ve been eating stress for breakfast, lunch, and dinner lately and I’d like to go regurgitate a workout and hunt through the internal wreckage for some glimmer of inner peace outside of the glittery shimmers gracing my eyelids. Even when that’s how I’m feeling on the inside, we’re still progressing through therapy goals and moving forward, and I am ever grateful for that.

As our little man has become calmer in and more tolerant of public spaces, we’ve being gradually increasing the level of functionality. Some trips he will push the shopping cart for close to an hour, we’re now starting to ask him to locate items before we’re in the aisle that contains it, we’re expecting him to carry his speech device the entire time, we’re expecting him to follow another member of the party (scanning and looking for them if they are out of sight), and we’re expecting him to practice sitting and waiting for periods of time approaching 20-30 minutes. We are continuing to work with him to enter bathrooms that have hand dryers when others are in them, and he does need someone giving him verbal prompts some of the time to maintain awareness of others near him so he doesn’t bump into them with the cart.

Some of these pictures were taken by me, but if I’m in the shot, those photos were taken by Hannah. These are a few pictures from last Friday. He’s been working very hard, and as always, it is an honor to be the mother to both of my beautiful children.

Following, looking for, and finding Hannah at a local Target.

Waiting with him and trying to talk him into going into the main bathroom because the family bathroom is closed, sometimes he needs frequent reminders and I have to stand in front of him as a physical prompt that he can’t go into certain places. It took him about 10 minutes to feel comfortable going in.

I give him skittles randomly for walking and pushing the cart safely, I walk next to him to help direct his attention to things he needs to avoid running into and so I can grab the cart if needed. Sometimes I still have to prompt him to ask for things, here he just wanted to grab a bottle of water instead of asking for it.