Quitting the social group

Well, I did it. I took the leap into a therapy-free world for my son. Outside of school, that is. Sam's independent speech therapist "graduated" him last November. She said that he was successfully learning his verb tenses and making inferences from story illustrations and that he was picking up verbal cues from other people, and so no longer needed to see her. He still gets speech therapy in school, mostly practice in conversation.

I also pulled him out of his social skills group. Our last meeting was last Thursday at a bouncy place. It was meeting once a week at different venues. The kids would bowl, ice skate, or whatever, then sit down in a circle, play games, practice turn-taking and what have you. The group meeting time was a pain in the rear end, meeting from 3:45-5:45, putting us in a time crunch for dinner and bed, not to mention rush hour traffic, but I'd mainly been feeling resentful of the group for some time, which I think was a signal from the subconscious that we were ready to be done. When you are no longer grateful to a therapist for providing effective services your child desperately needs.....well, perhaps your child no longer desperately needs them. Sam is socially successful at school. Most telling: When I told him we were quitting the group and I asked him how he felt about it, he answered, "Happy. We get to go on our own!" Sam's a fairly outgoing child, so that was interesting coming from him. Maybe he didn't think he needed it either.
With social skills, we are done. Sam gets speech therapy for conversation and occupational therapy for fine motor skills at school, but that's it. I think he enjoys the pull outs for their own sake and to get a break from class.

It's been awhile, but let's try it again.....

Sam is six now; he had his birthday a few weeks ago. He is in a mainstream kindergarten class, and is doing relatively well. Academically, he is fine and he is well liked and accepted by his peers. His main problem these days has to do with his executive functioning difficulties. He has a hard time with emotional control, with transitions to non-preferred activities, with paying and sustaining attention. He is frequently unpredictable, in positive and negative ways. Fortunately, we have a fabulous teacher and a great IEP. The school has been very accomodating. Sam has a separate desk where he can take a break to play with playdough. If that is not enough, he can request to go to the office, where he plays with Legos in the principal's office. He has learned to do this independently. So, he's doing pretty darn well so far.
His independent speech therapist graduated him a few months ago, so now all he gets is 30 minutes once a week from the school. The school therapist focuses mainly on improving his conversational skills.
He does get occupational therapy, also for 30 minutes once a week, to work on his fine motor skills. His printing is messy but is steadily improving. So far, so good! Maybe there isn't a reason for this blog anymore, as we seem to have made it for now.