My Support Group

I remember there was one day last year, where I took Damien to the doctor and after a little bit, my doctor looked at me and said, "Jeri, do you have the support that you need? Do you belong to a support group yet?" 

I remember thinking, "No. Not really." I didn't want to go to weekly meetings and talk to a bunch of strangers about the problems we were facing. It would be just another thing to add to my  huge list of things to do during the week! 

But then I thought about it. I don't need to belong to a support group that meets every week, I already had one. I had my sister-in-law. She had some of the same things going on and had been dealing with a couple kids and disorders already for a couple of years. In fact, when I started noticing the changes in Damien, she was the one that mentioned sensory processing disorder. I know I can call her anytime, whether its for advice, or to vent about frustrations. 

I have my family. I can call any one of them and just talk. And sometimes  that's all I need.

I have the speech and occupational therapists that we work with. I've found that if you have some great therapists, ones that aren't just there to help your kids, but also there to talk to, it will help alot. We probably spend the first 10-15 minutes talking about the frustrations or triumphs of the week. 

You don't need to belong to a real "support group." As long as you have friends to talk to, friends that understand what you're going through, that's all you need. 

Source

 

Disorders

My daughter, Kayleigh, has been in speech therapy for 3 years. For 2 1/2 years we were making progress but there were still some set backs and we couldn't figure out why she couldn't understand some things. Her therapist at the time said, "Repition, repition, repition."

In the fall of 2013, we switched therapists for my son and due to schedule conflict, we ended up switching speech therapists for Kayleigh. She was sad, but after meeting her new therapist, she was excited! At the first appointment she was evaluated and within the first month was "diagnosed" with:

(The speech therapist can't officially diagnose. We are waiting for our appointment with the specialist to be confirmed.)

*Sensory Processing Disorder

*Auditory Processing Disorder

*Expressive Language Processing Disorder

*Articulation Disorder
*Phonological Processing Disorder
*Symbol Recognition Disorder

And is suspected to have:
*Aprexia
*Visual Spatial

In August, Kayleigh went to kindergarten. She loved it and was so excited to ride the bus! A couple weeks after school started, I received a call from her teacher and we talked about how Kayleigh was having a hard time. We made the difficult decision to pull her out of public school and to start homeschool. At first, she didn't understand why she couldn't go to school with her friends, but after a couple weeks, she didn't bring up the topic again.

We worked hard, and soon she was enjoying it! She also started seeing an occupational therapist and he worked on numbers and letters with her. She still wasn't very confident in herself, but she was showing improvement. As of today, Kayleigh can write numbers in order to 20, write her ABC's, and she has even started to read!!

A couple weeks ago, I was talking to her therapists and after discussing things with my husband, we decided to put her back in public school this fall. She will go into kindergarten again and be one of the older students. She is so excited and we are so proud of all the hard work she has done!