Monday, May 30, 2011
Today was the start of another week for therapy. Cari, Anna and I were put with Dr. Tullos this week. I was assigned to Jonathan, a four-year old boy who has cognitive impairments and is probably on the autism spectrum. Dr. Tullos asked Shanna, who worked with him last week, who she thought would be good with him and she said me…. Because I had a “firm hand”. Hahaha I’m not sure how to take that but after an afternoon of one-on-one therapy with him, I now understand what she means. I had to develop my own version of a restraining chair. Thankfully, Dr. Tullos came over and helped me hold him down while we rolled the ball back and forth. He loves when I sing to him and rub my fingers on his cheeks, note to self!
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Therapy with Jonathan today was a success!! Stimulation with breaks every couple minutes did the trick. I held Jonathan in my lab and wrapped my legs around his while I guided his hand towards a fruit and vegetable chart with Velcro manipulatives. He took the manipulative off and put it back on the chart. Every other minute or so he got overwhelmed and made loud sounds and his body became stiff. I put him in my arms like a baby, rocked him, and sang This Little Light or Mango Tree and he calmed down. After I sang for a few minutes, we went back to the fruit and vegetable chart. About 30 minutes of working and taking breaks, I realized Jonathan was self-stimulating by taking the manipulatives and rubbing his legs and arms. Tomorrow I think we will work with the language packet that has objects with all kinds of textures like cotton balls and nail files. Dr. Weaver’s daughter, Reagan, is an occupational therapist (OT) and will be joining us in about a week; Jonathan will be GREAT for her to work with. Oh, and when we go to the playground in the mornings, Jonathon sits on the merry-go-round the entire 30 minutes.
Dinner was fried chicken with mashed potatoes and green beans. Charissa said she wanted to take Leonard home as her souvenir. After dinner, a couple of us went over to Mrs. Mona’s, our neighbor, who is a seamstress. She is making me a queen size quilt for 200 kwacha, which is about $40. 5,000 kwacha = $1. When we walked back, Webster, one of our night watchman, wanted to teach us a song in tonguen. He let us know that we were asked to sing at church one Sunday. While we were practicing, the power went off (which happens every other day or so) but we kept on singing….good times. Charissa took some videos, I must say, we weren’t too shabby.
Our class developed a group blog for our multicultural class. I will post the link below if you are interested (mom and dad). This blog will focus on the speech-language pathology aspect of our trip… tune in if you like that stuff! I am in school with some great writers.
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