Last Day of Art Camp!

Dan took Alison to her last day of art camp today. Yesterday they pounded nails in a cardboard tube, then wrapped the tube in masking tape and filled it with dried beans and painted the outside of the tube. Today she finished up her rain stick, although she was just telling me that there are a few more details that she'd like to add to her decorations. It turned out really cute and for a carboard tube with nails and dried beans it doesn't sound too bad either. She had so much fun this week. She also got a magnet today with the free outdoor summer concert series schedule on it. Free entertainment, yay!

While Dan and Alison were gone, Ian's speech therapist came over. I know I say this every time, but I like her so much. She brought over lots of new pictures for me to go through and pick the ones that I thought we would use. She also said that she called her good friend that is also a speech therapist to talk about Ian. He's such a puzzle. There are 2 main ways speech can go wrong. Either his brain can't make his mouth say the right thing (in which case he might say the same word several different ways or have trouble saying anything at all) or his brain makes up new rules/patterns but they happen to be wrong (like him adding g to the beginning of words and f to the end). Apparently he's riding a really fine line between these two problems. Not being fully in either camp. But like she keeps stressing to me, the most important thing is that we find what works for him so that he can communicate now. Then we can work on how to build the speech to match his communication. One big obstacle is that he pretty much refuses to imitate what we say. We still aren't sure if it's behavioral (he's 2 and just refusing because he knows we want him to do it) or if it's actually a processing problem where his brain can't send the right signals to make him say it (and therefore he tantrums because he is frustrated because he can't do it). I know for sure that sometimes it is behavioral. I see him look right at me and chose to do the opposite of what I ask. I can tell by the look he gives me that he is testing me to see what I will do when he refuses. Other times though, I'm not so sure. One day he hurt Alison and I told him to tell her sorry. I figured he would give her a hug or something to convey sorry, I didn't really expect him to say it. But instead he started throwing a tantrum. At first I thought that he was mad because I expected him to apologize, suddenly it occurred to me that he was mad because I had told him to say sorry and he couldn't. Then I said "give Alison a hug to show her you are sorry, you don't have to actually say the word". He immediately got up, gave her a hug and everything was ok.

Well, I need to go wake Ian up from his nap. We've got to go to the library and a few other places.