Friday is here already and luckily Simon is working from home this morning so that I can head to the therapy session without Oliver in tow.  At the moment I am sitting in on all of his sessions as it would be too disruptive for Oliver to be in there also he stays at home.  We arrive at PTS sign in and after a short wait head to the gym with Miss Joyce.  Elliot seems very quiet and I am wondering if the early morning sessions are not working for him and if we should be a little later.  Obviously an earlier session would work for me as currently he has a 8.15 start which considering some days he doesn’t get up until after8 this can be a little difficult as we have to wake him early.  Not always a good idea :o)  Joyce gets straight to work and has a quick chat with Elliot about the toy he brought to class today.  One of Elliots little quirks is that he can’t leave the house with out some sort of toy.  This is not such a great deal but each day the idea of what he wants to take out with him changes and it can delay the house leaving process by a good 15minutes.  As I am usually running late this little “quirk” can get very stressful and tearful for Elliot.  Joyce asks Elliot what he would like to do today and she suggests they make an obstacle course.  Elliot is not as “animated ” as he was last week and keeps looking back to me for reassurance.  When Joyce asks a question he looks at me to answer for him.  Which clearly in the past I have been doing too much.  I encourage him to speak in his big loud voice and tell miss Joyce himself.  He tries his best but you can see how hard this is for him.  The poor guy just when you feel that some real progress is being made and that he maybe isn’t as shy as we think he has a session like this.  During the building of the obstacle course he keeps looking back to me to answer for him.  He does warm up by the time the course it built and really gets into the flow but it takes a big part of the session.  I wonder if me being in the session is holding him back.  I ask Joyce and as next week Simon is out of town I suggest that he attends the session himself and see if he gets on any better.  Working on one of the techniques that Christie started last week Joyce asks Elliot what his favourite part of the obstacle course was.  He tells her it was the stretchy tunnel so they draw a picture together to help explain to Miss Christie what fun they had swinging in the tunnel and doing wiggles.

Onto the SLT session.  I am sat on the floor playing with toys with Elliot when Jayne pops her head around the corner.  Apparently Miss Christie is running late.  This really isn’t an issue as we don’t plan too much during the day to get a smooth transition for Elliot to get to school.   Christie arrives and Elliot proudly shows her his toy and tries to tell her all about it.  He shows her the drawing he has done with Joyce and does his best to explain to Christie what he has been doing in OT.  She asks how we have been getting on and I tell her we have been doing the exercises and that he is doing a lot better at telling us what he has been doing at school.  I tell her that we are making a big effort to help him correct words he is struggling to pronounce we are reading lots more books to help with language development and encouraging him to speak as much as possible.  Christie comments that she can already see a big improvement in him which is really reassuring.  I discuss with Christie how she thinks having him in session on his own will work.  She suggest we give it a go and ask me to prepare some things to talk to Elliot about.  I tell her we are going to Gilroy gardens so she asks that we bring back a map and take photographs of the day out.  Elliot tells her that he will be playing on the Xbox so Christie asks him to draw a picture of what happens in the game so he can tell her all about it next week.  Elliot seems to think that this is a good idea and has a good session chatting to Christy.  I think it is fair to say that when Christy gets her Ipad out his eyes light up, they play a couple of games together and chat about them.  He has a quick game on angry birds as a tool to engage more conversation from him which he just manages.  We quickly discuss how next week session will work with me having Oliver in tow and agree that Elliot will spend most of the session on his own and I will join for the last 5-10minutes.

In other news we have finally managed to get him to remove his plaster from last weeks finger cut.  He went from being completely adamant about not having a plaster on to being obsessed with wearing one.  I sometimes struggle with these changes in direction with him and constantly seem to be asking myself does he have aspergers, are we imagining things on a good day.  On a bad day I am then on the other side, OMG he definitely has and am I in complete denial that he is much worse than we possibly think.  Oh the indecision and the endless questioning is driving me crazy.  At least it isn’t too long now until his session at the Centre fro Developing minds, hopefully this will give us the clarification we need, role on the 14th……