A little glimpse of our therapy life!

So as you all know Kate is receiving Occupational Therapy (OT) for a variety of issues. Mainly for her sensory issues, some fine motor planning, and most recently her overwhelming OCD! Today Miss Betty came to our house like she usually does on Wednesday afternoons. Kate is always so excited to see her. She ran to the door yelling, "Miss Betty! Miss Betty! She's Here!" She came in and they got right to work. One of Kate's goals is to participate and tolerate messy play. We have worked with play doh, silly putty, tape, glue, and many other "messy" things. Today was going to be the big test. Now Kate had already had a hard day. From last night to this morning she cried her eyes out because she did not want to wear her pajamas to school. You see it is spirit week at her preschool and today was pajama day. Why they have spirit week with days that you have to wear odd things to school, at a special needs preschool where many kids deal with transition issues is beyond me. (Okay I feel better now!) Jillian was able to talk her down and was able to actually get her to wear her pajamas with the help of Carter! They changed int he parking lot! By the way she came home and immediately ripped the pajamas off! I was nervous on how this therapy session would go. Today was the ultimate test. It was SHAVING CREAM DAY! Okay so to most parents I can see that you now have a big smile on your face and you are saying to yourself, "How fun!" Not so much! You see Chris and I looked at each other and knew that this would not be good. Kate does not like to be dirty and does not like to have things on her hands. We came into the kitchen and Miss Betty showed her how to spray the shaving cream from the can; which she thought was pretty cool. The cream was out of the can and on her hands. Chris, Miss Betty and myself all stopped, took a breath, and waited..... a smile came across Kate's face. She began to laugh and say this is silly. What!!!!!!! This was amazing!!!




Miss Betty and Kate began to play with the shaving cream. They were making letters in the cream and shapes. Kate was doing a great job.



We thought we were in the clear... then it happened. Kate stopped making the letter "t" and said, "I have to go wash my hands." Miss Betty turned to me and said, "sensory overload," We were able to talk to Kate and Miss Betty was able to take some cream off her hands. That sufficed her for a little while. They began to play some more. Every three minutes Kate would say that she had to go wash her hands. Each time Miss Betty was able to take the cream off with her hands and she was okay with that.


After about 15 minutes or so Kate got off the chair and stood up and said. "I have got to go wash my hands!" She ran to the bathroom and started scrubbing. She came out and surprisingly enough got right back up on the chair and began to play again. You can see in the pictures when she got it on her face. That did not go over so well. Kate lasted for about 20 minutes with the shaving cream washing her hands frequently in the end. We were actually very proud of her. 6 months ago if you asked her to touch shaving cream she would have started screaming. She would have put 1 finger in the cream and then freaked out. Today Kate put both hands in the cream and was digging around. Miss Betty was very proud of her and said that she did a great job! We were all smiles at the end of the session with her. Kate has made some real progress in OT. Kate brings so much joy to our life and she always does things a little bit differently than most, but boy do we love her! If we could just get her to stop lining everything up we would be doing great!:)