Therapy Shortage

Last night I decided to go through a lot of my sons paperwork from his school. As many of you know my son has been diagnosed with "preliminary autism".

The motivation for this project was the fact that I have noticed his little check marks in his cuddle grams for going to some of his therapy had not been checked off. (for over a week) Now my son is supposed to receive 135 minutes a week of physical therapy and occupational therapy and 180 minutes a week of speech therapy. You add all this together and it equals roughly to about 540 minutes of each one a month. I did the math since I do save all his papers from school and he has never, ever received the amount of therapy recommended. Give and take it has been the holidays and he does miss school due to illness but he has yet to break even close to 300 minutes per session. This month I will say the speech therapist has been doing really well and is in there everyday working with Logan. 

I made a trip into the school to see one of the directors and ask why my son does not receive his therapy. I could not get a straight answer of course and she used the excuse that they are short handed. So because of their lack of being able to keep people employed my son and others kids have to take a back seat to therapy. Therapy that is important in helping these children learn the basics they need. 

Not only have I heard that this is an issue with this school but once you bring it up to their attention it will be addressed. I was basically told by another person who has had the same issue with this particular problem is the fact that parents do not keep track themselves so they don't bother with it. I am somewhat obsessed when it comes to my sons care. From what I have learned not many parents care as much and there are only a handful of us that do. It is a shame if you ask me. Makes me very very sad for those kids. 

Needless to say if I do not start seeing improvement and an increase in therapy I will be finding other ways to get my son his therapy. 

One of the downfalls living where I do, not enough resources for kids with Autism. There is only one school. Yes one choice for us parents. As far as extra therapies there is only one other choice here. Equine therapy. Which I need to check the age limits to that. Logan just may enjoy the horses. 

Autism Awareness Facebook Page

A Wordless Wednesday

I have not done a Wordless Wednesday in a long while so I thought I would join back in

 Mine and Erics Christmas Gifts to each other!!

Linking up with:

Home of OHM

Tots and Me

Clair Justine

Choosy, Picky Eater. How do I Get Past This Hurdle?

I am seeking some help and some advice. 

My road so far on the Autism journey with my preliminary diagnosed son has not been to rough or nightmarish as I sometimes read on other blogs. Logan has been pretty well behaved. He is developmentally delayed (severe) but that can be handled. He does have a meltdown or two here and there and that is handled. The one thing that has me worried at the moment is his nutrition and eating habits. I know it is common in autistic children to be choosy eaters but how far should I let this go. 

Logan once enjoyed many different types of foods when he was an infant. He would eat all the fruits, vegetables and even the baby cereal (the first of my three children). As he got older the pickier he got. Just a few months ago he would eat rice chex soaked in milk, bananas, vanilla wafers, scrambled eggs, chicken nuggets, french fries, carrots and one of his most favorites was grilled cheese. Not to bad for an autistic child right? I did not have many worries about his diet at this time. 

Logan started school and became sick ALOT!! I addressed the issue of his eating habits to his doctor because they had gotten worse and less foods. He advised us to put him on pediasure to try to make sure he got some of the nutrients he needed. It got to where he could not hold any of this down and started throwing up almost every day or night. 

We took him to the doctor and I requested allergy test for milk. His doctor tried to do a whole food panel test. Unfortunately they could not get enough blood to test for everything but did get enough to test for cows milk allergy. Sure enough my poor son is allergic so there goes even more things from his diet that he can not have. My son now only eats bread which I have to get a special white wheat kind with no milk, crackers, shortbread cookies because he can no longer have his beloved vanilla wafers. Everything else I seem to try he refuses. 

His therapists at school they will try to do it some during his lunch time to try to work on eating habits. My son is one month away from two and hardly eats a thing. He is not losing weight yet but the thought is in the back of my mind and scares me. He no longer sleeps through the night. Ever! I want to put the blame on him possibly being hungry. How am I to know though? As I have mentioned before Logan is non-verbal. Sign language is being worked on at school as well as in the home but he has yet to really utilize any of them. 

Since finding out his milk allergy his eczema has improved enormously!! The downside, his diet is more limited and soy milk seems to go right through him and he does not get as full so it means for a more restless night. Something has got to give, there has to be something out there that he will like. I am yearning for a full nights sleep because my sons belly is finally full. I want my son to be healthy and the threat of gastrostomy tube to be out of the picture all together. If anyone out there has some advice I welcome it!!!

Logan enjoying a hash brown after having tubes put in his ears. He did eat 3/4 of it :-)