Underwear

I was not able to put Zak in underwear yesterday since Ryder has two therapy sessions. This morning I decided to take the boys to Towson Town Center to run around in the play area because it is pouring outside. Once we got home I tried to get them to nap, but that did not work. So I gave in and put Zak in underwear!

So far in the last hour he has peed on the potty 3 times. He has definitely learned that he gets a piece of candy (usually 1 Pez) when he goes on the potty so each time he would go a tony bit and ask for his candy! I am going to ask him every 30 minutes if he needs to go and then we will space it out as he gets better at telling me when he needs to go and not after he goes. I am sure this will be a messy process, but it has to happen sometime. Ryder is still no where near ready for this so he will stay in diapers. We are working on getting him to tell us when he needs a diaper change, but that is still a struggle.

I received a call today regarding a research program at Kennedy Krieger. It is for kids up to 33 months old so Ryder is just at the upper end, but still qualifies age-wise. I have said we are interested so the next step will be another phone call from one of the therapists. They will do a questionnaire with me over the phone about Ryder's medical history and what not. Then they will schedule for a time to bring him in and do the ADOS testing (formal Autism testing) along with another test called the Mullen. If he meets their strict guidelines for the program (I was told many children do not qualify so not to be upset or surprised because they are looking for certain things with this study) he will then he randomly placed into one of the two different sub-groups of the study.

The first group would be a classroom setting at Kennedy Krieger. There would be 5 children and 3 adults. It is set up like a pre-school and meets 4 days a week for 2.5 hours each day and lasts 6 months. They would do circle time, art time, and playing. Along with getting individual therapy to help with skills they each need to work on.

The second group would be more of a parent training. A therapist would come to the house twice a month to do individual therapy along with teach the parents different activities to help with daily things. Then once a month the parent brings the child to Kennedy Krieger for therapy in the center. This would also last for 6 months.

Since this is a research program everything is free. The person I spoke to brought up a good point that this whole thing is really a win-win situation for us. If we get picked to be part of the program that is awesome, but if not then we still get all of the formal testing that normally takes 4-6 months to get scheduled. We have been on the waiting list for this testing so it would get him in quicker!