Last Friday I took Sam to her school for Kindergarten testing. As I was driving there I was feeling wrong about the whole situation. I mean, why do I want anyone to test Sam just to tell me "this, this and this are sorely lacking". I just didn't see any purpose to it, and started debating what my alternatives were for the fall. I reluctantly went into the school and Samantha went into one room with her teacher and I sat next door filling out paperwork. After ten minutes or so they came back in and Sam was wearing a yellow crown with a big star and smiling ear to ear and the teacher said "she did great". She just tested her on colors and did a little drawing with her, nothing intense, but Samantha loved the interaction with her. We started talking about fall and the teacher's concerns for how Samantha will adjust and I think Samantha started getting frustrated like "okay, let's go already", so we hurried down the hall to meet with the speech therapist. She had a tiny little office and we crowded around a little table in the corner for some standardized testing which was annoying to see Samantha fail at, but after a couple minutes the therapist said "I knew these would be difficult, and really we just need her to get them wrong so we can say 'okay, she qualifies for help'". Then she explained that she knows we want to push speech with Sam and "what speech therapist wouldn't want the same?" but that she thinks it would be comforting to have a picture type schedule in the classroom and I said that sounds great. She said that she had already purchased the software and that they have also purchased a touch computer screen just for Sam to use and some software to go with that. I was blown away. I know without a doubt that we wouldn't be getting this quality of help through the public schools. I still can't believe she got into this school!!! And I can't believe that they are being accommodating and accepting of her. Her teacher is an excellent teacher- I went a couple weeks ago to record the classroom and her kindergarteners were reading, doing math, totally well behaved, etc. And that's been a bit intimidating because I know it will be different for her to teach someone like Samantha, but she was really nice and got choked up talking about Samantha and how frustrating it must be for her to have so much going on inside and not be able to express it. Whew! What a blessing and relief! At least I feel like we'll be giving this a fair try and will only pull Sam out if it just isn't working out to be the right thing for her, not because she isn't included by "the system".
We went horseback riding again this week and brought Ellie with us. We started exactly the same with feeding the horses some carrots and petting and brushing them, after which Samantha again got a little bored, but then we put Ellie up on the horse and Sam came right over and got on too with no hesitation. She was completely ecstatic and did not want to get off of him after a nice long walk. At the end she went into the barn by herself, found the horse cookies, got a bowl full of them and climbed up the steps to the horse's stable and started feeding them to him. She was really in heaven and it was very encouraging. We all can't wait to go back.
Sam's been walking around practicing all these breathy sounds. Weird, but at the same time, pretty obvious to me that it's practice, so definitely a positive thing. And today the long awaited ability emerged to blow bubbles. We've worked up to it by lighting a single candle and singing happy birthday and blowing out the candle over and over, and it finally paid off. Developing breath control is huge in speech. Unfortunately a lot of other things are huge too, but hey, we're moving forwards and not backwards or at a standstill. Oh, also, the speech therapist at the school was very positive about Samantha's vocalizations and the sounds she is and is not making and how she thinks she will help her, so that's great! I think we can't get enough people helping and giving their input, because obviously there's no one magic trick to helping her.
