Left Brain Right Brain

Had a fantastic weekend with Megan for numerous reasons.

Firstly, Megan and I went over to my Mum and Dad’s for on Saturday morning/lunch whilst Naomi had a break and she was obviously happy and content- lots of smiles, hugs and kisses for both my parents- which is a rarity for Megan as she’s fairly stand-offish. It made their day I think.

Secondly, she slept another night through without the Vallergan on Friday/Sat night, which gives us hope- we really don’t want it to become a permenant addition to Megs life. Have to be realistic though- she woke up the Sat/Sun night 😦

All in all though, a great, enjoyable weekend.

Well, it came through the post today. Impressively prompt I must say.

The majority of the report was a simple re-affirmation of what we had gone through with the EP on the day of his interview. The important bits were in his conclusions:

That Megan should be placed in a ‘nursery provision with adults used to working with children with complex communication and social interaction issues.’

Teachers should liase with the Speech and Language Therapist to improve communication skills. Methods should include:

Using TEACCH symbols and timetables to make the day predictable for Megan, use the Picture Exchange Communication System to help Megan understand the importance of asking for things, teaching specific words and phrases to use in a proper social context, use ryhmes and songs to produce predictable patterns of language as a communicative aid.

All sounds very laudable and worthy and I agree with the measures as proposed but I’d like to see them made a bit more ‘real’ i.e. I’d like to see an example curriculum of a typical day in Megans nursery education using these tools. We’ll no doubt say that in our response to the report.

Megan hasn’t slept properley since she was about a year old. When she went for her two-week assessment, one of the things we wanted sorted out as a priority was Megans sleep as both Naomi and myself were close to exhaustion. Megan wakes for approx 2-3 hours every night between 1-4am.

One of the things it was suggested we try was Vallergan. This is an anti-histamine based drug used primarily to treat excessive itchiness in Adults and Children with ailments like Eczma or Psoriasis- the side effect of the anti-histamine is that it causes drowsiness.

We thougt long and hard about trying it. We were loth to give Megan a drug that wasn’t having an obviously beneficial effect on her- i.e. she wasn’t ill as such. However, it came to a head for us after an intense 3 week period of Megan refusing to go to bed intil gone 10pm, then waking up at about 1am and staying awake for another 3 hours, then waking up again at around 6.30-7am. We decided to try it.

It worked perfectly- Megan slept straight through. We gave it to her the two nights after that, again sucessfully, then gave her a night off it which once again she slept straight through. We’ve heard that kids become resistant to it so we hope to keep up the on/off treament and hopefully remove it altogether from her life. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Megan had a visit from an Educational Psychologist today. Its part of her ongoing assessment/getting ready for education episode.

He was a nice bloke who didn’t try to hard to ingratiate himself with Megan (behaviour thats always a guarantee of a few moments of awkward silence on the ingratiators part- Megan couldn’t give a monkeys). He explained that his data gathering methods would be two-fold.

First he would watch Megan- how she played, what she played with, how she interacted with Naomi and I etc. Secondly, he would be asking Naomi and I questions about what Megan knew in the three key areas of communication, development and interaction. The whole thing took about half to three quarters of an hour and we never felt pressured or compelled to defend aspects of Megans behaviour, which I can understand parents needing to do in some situations.

The kind of questions we were asked were fairly routine ones that we’ve already become used to hearing from Health Care professionals- does Megan talk? How does she communicate? Does she play with dolls? etc etc. All questions that were easy to answer.

All through this Megan was quite happy to do her own thing (as she always is) in that she would come and hug us or watch the TV (the Sky Guide-channel 998- is the channel du jour at the moment) or sing a song or bash my keyboard etc.

The upshot of all this was that the EP said he would write up a report based on his observations and that his recommendations would be to get Megs into a special needs nursery ASAP, which dovetailed nicely with what Megs Health Visitor felt was best and we should get Speech Therapy sorted as a priority-which we were happy to inform him we had well in hand.

I asked about a Statement of Needs for Megan. A Statement is apparently a very vital document that details what each child should recieve in terms of their education. It is vital that this Statement be precise and detailed with no vagueness in either provision or intent. The EP told me that this meeting was the first step to getting the Statement drawn up so I’m hoping this is the case- apparently getting a Statement is notoriously difficult so I’m still a bit wary.

I’ll keep this blog updated with the results of the report as we get it.

Looks like a good interesting source of data here.

Its basically an online library but with a section that concentrates solely on ASD.