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Special Needs
changingnames
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How many kiddos in a Social Group?
changingnames
member
I put lots of paragraphs in to make it easier to read but clearly not grammatically correct- gotta love writing on an iphone. You can skip to the last paragraph if the background isn't needed.
hi ladies, I am trying to get some good activities set up for the summer and one of my goals is to get ds in a social group and in a group speech session to make up for the speech session that will be dropped during the summer (he will be in esy but they cut pull out speech services during summer). He will also have two weeks at the start and two at the end with no school but will stil have four hours of private ABA every week.
Ds is 3 yrs 10 months old, dx PDd-nos, areas of struggle - social, self regulation, quickly mastering, getting bored- and finding a way to make things not so boring (Aka trouble making), and speech.
Speech has improved so much that his struggles with it are mostly with peers. We chose to have a private evaluation to use for placement (in the social group and private speech) rather than use the eval from last July since we knew he had changed so much.
The evaluator was an off duty speech therapist that works for the school district. She did not see the articulation issues that I reported and felt that he was developmentally on target or nearly on target in all categories (a huge change from his last eval where sample sentences we "Look, clock!", now he says some pretty deep things and never shuts up).
She felt his current schedule of therapy at school must be sufficient given his progress and did not anticipate recommending additional therapy. I sort of thought this seemed odd since it is their business to sell therapy but glad to hear she sees such improvement. This was just her impression right after seeing him, she has not delivered the offical report yet and may change her mind after tallying things up. She spent two hours with him and I just got a note she may want to see him for some more testing.
I think she didnt see some of the difficulties we see because he shines in the one to one therapist setting and is mo likely to struggle when generalizing to peer interaction. During his IEP his school speech wants to swap all of his pullouts to group settings bc she is watching him master so quickly and easily in private and not struggle till he is in group. She did not say she felt he was developmental in all categories though she certainly thinks he has progressed mightily- she see,ed to see more of what we see
Other areas of high glossy shining are- academic, one on one drills of any sort, imaginative play, and level of cuteness (no seriously he is crazy cute 
ok finally for my actual question- the social group they suggested has only two other boys in it- are they usually this small? We were told there would be both typical and peers with asd in the group but that doesn't sound like a lot of peers in there. His aba case manager has not had experience with this place and I am wondering if they are new and don't have tons of people yet or if this is just a normal size. what ratio of typical to delayed peers would be preferable or normal to look for? I'm wondering if I should just drive further for a place that his manager has experience with. We are also signing him up for some group speech to supplement for summer- what is a normal size for that? Thanks for reading thru all that
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Re: How many kiddos in a Social Group?
. Poor punctuation on my part. I meant one of his difficulties is that once he masters something he gets bored and starts some trouble. Academic skills are thrones he picks up quickly. Social skills are harder for him .
. Since he is my first LO I don't know what typical would look like so maybe it's spectrum related and maybe it isn't- I wouldn't know. I have no doubt that he is on the spectrum so I wouldn't be surprised if his speech reflects that in sow ways. Still he has made incredible progress and we are so happy to be having full conversations with him and get to hear what is going on in his head (most of the time, sometimes I just want quiet)
He doesn't NEVER shut up, that was an overstatement- with two kids it just feels constant. The last few weeks he has been asking "why?" to pretty much everything so it feels like he doesn't stop sometimes. He does have this little humming thing he does that seems atypical and will surely be annoying to peers (I'll admit it annoys me). His "deep thoughts" are more just that we are seeing much more complex thoughts and descriptions than we were 8 months ago. Wish I could come up with an example.
. Exactly! Hopefully this will be the additional testing because. I told her he he already knows how to work a single adult. He needs the peer instruction manual!
. The therapist who runs the social skills group is trained in Michelle Garcia and FloorTime. Glad to hear the size is about right. I'll look up super flex.
Some googling turned up a school right next to our house "Linda Bell-Mood" or something like that. Sounds like it is more speech and reading than social though. I am also looking into the programs at Rady Children's hospital. It sounds like we could get him into additional hours of aba based preschool there with our insurance. I just am not sure how many hours a day want him to be going going (I will admit I'm not sure how much driving I can do with a toddler, a husband who commutes three hours and goes to law school, plus my own medical issues that are considerable). One of the girls in his class goes to school w him from 8.45- 12.45 then drives thirty minutes to start the rady's afternoon program 2-5. It works for them and she is doing great but it seems like a long day so we have been sticking to school till one plus our in home program and play dates during the afternoon. it's ALS ot overwhelming how many resources I have been finding around here. I am Defintely grateful to see they are there but a job figuring out where to spend the time and resources.
. Is it consisted a "special interest" if they change frequently? He will be really into Thomas one day and lightening McQueen the next. A week later it is dinosaurs and four days after that he is back to Thomas being the coolest thing ever. I can usually get him to swap between things so even if he says Mater is so cool he is my favorite! He will set him down and get interested in let's say a dinosaur book if I ask if he wants to read it- then dinosaurs are cool, or maybe he goes back to mater. He is pretty fluid with that.
. One thing that is interesting is that he has a birth mark a little smaller than a silver dollar on his shoulder. His therapist said that one of her other kids is in a study for kiddos with asd that have a similar birthmark and she has since noticed that about half of her kiddos have one.
Example- a little girl was trying to chat with him and he really wanted to interact with her but she w talking circles around him. He just kept asking her ". What's your name?". Being particular with what he says could be something he shares with me or gets from listening to me. I'm sure sometimes as a kid I sounded like a professor and even now I catch myself and try to use less and more common words since people may not understand me otherwise. I can see how this would be seen in kids with asd. He may also get it hearing me. I was dx with add and medicated as a kid, gate/gifted and vocabulary was where I excelled.