 |
| Lacrosse is cold in Colorado. Music is being listened to in there. |
This last week we packed in LOTS of firsts for Molly and she sailed through beautifully. The local agency the Resource Exchange is now funding Music Therapy. What is SO exciting about this is the partnering of two scientific modalities: ABA therapy and a certified behaviorist overseeing the bi-weekly sessions, partnered with music therapy and a masters level therapist implementing the therapy. Our first session was 2 hours of blah blah blah for Molly as we talked the whole time about goals and objectives and her history. The last few minutes the therapists pulled out the guitars and keyboards and sang the "Frozen" song and Molly got so excited and started dancing in the middle of the room. Will be interesting to see how they use this potent motivator of music to coax speech and specific behaviors out of Molly. On our drive up to the mountains on Friday, we let Molly play DJ with the music to see what her favorite songs were so that we can let the therapists know what music to use. Hope they know who "The Dirty Heads" are. Stay tuned as I will have more details after this first week of observation.
Secondly, our little athlete started Special Olympics basketball with other friends from Foundations for Successful Living (where she goes to work 3 days a week). Molly can nail a basket from near the hoop as she has had many hours in the driveway practicing as well as years of basketball in PE class. However, dribbling and far away shots are not her forte (yet). When picking out their jersey #'s, she immediately went for #22 (Jack's lacrosse #). That was one of the largest sizes and since she is so tiny now she ended up with the smallest jersey #1! Go girl! Games don't start for another few weeks which is a relief as I have no idea how she is going to handle a real competition? Will they call her for double dribbling (or better yet just carrying the ball)? I pray that there is a little grace surrounding the rules.... at least in the beginning :)
Finally, Molly was invited to the Manitou Springs High School winter semi formal even though she graduated last year!! She had a night out with friends with NO adults (i.e. teachers or parents) with her at dinner or on a drive to the dance. How cool and normal is that? I'll admit it was a little freaky for me to watch her walk away with the group of high school student council kids who were taking the group to dinner and then to the dance. Knowing that I wasn't going to be there to help cross the busy street, to help her order her dinner, to make sure she didn't lose her "talker", to pay for her meal...... and then not hear anything for 5 hours until I picked her up at 11 pm was disconcerting. And really nice too.
For reals I wasn't THAT nervous as I know the student council President Sophie Kilroy, who had invited Molly to come to the dance. She is so responsible and I knew that Molly was in good hands. There were 5 girls from student council and 5 of Molly's peers so that ratio was good and our kids were in competent hands. I didn't get a verbose report at the end of the night but it sounded like the evening went really well. Molly was dancing in the thick of the crowd when I arrived, the music was pumping, and everyone appeared to be having a good time.
It took everything I had to stay awake until 11 pm to pick her up so I was ready to hop immediately into bed when we got home. Not Molly....she had to do her clean up routine around the house and was edgier than normal, which was to be expected after a night of not normal routines. So I let her do her thing, then tucked her cute little oxygen tubed face into bed @ 11:30 and didn't hear a peep all night.
Nights out with friends are fun and exhausting! Thank you Sophie and the awesome STUCO kids at Manitou Springs High School!!
No comments:
Post a Comment