We really are lucky to live in Newton and have Ella be able to go to the Newton school system with their special needs program. I don’t think she would be getting the level of care she does elsewhere. We communicate with the staff via a notebook that travels with Ella back and forth to school. In it we receive nearly daily updates on Ella news. The usual updates such as ‘she finished all her yogurt’ or ‘participated nicely in circle time’ and also the unexpected ‘this week we are learlning about Picasso’ (I am not making this up). The team is attentive, creative and caring. Ella seems to be enjoying it and has gradually learned to trust them (and even go to the bathroom while at school). There has been some progress on the communications front. Ella has been using the communications board more and more. She gestures over to the board, on it are pictures of options she has for food (cheese, bread etc.) and she will point to what it is she wants. Often it is for us to turn on the radio or get her a particular food. She seems to enjoy the fact that she can communicate her requirements to us. It is encouraging to us that she is getting this. Her walking is improving slowly. Now she can be supported by holding on to her shirt in the shoulder area, she nearly manages to keep her balance. She loves being let loose with her walker in a wide open area (such as the basketball court at the gym where she just lets loose runs around with cries of glee. A new development has also happened in the feeding department. She has been slowly improving in picking up her food herself with the fork and just yesterday we got a plate that has a little rim to it. This turned out to be perfect and suddenly she was feeding herself completely using the fork, The rim keeps the food from flying all over the place and we supply the encouragement in the form of loud applause and standing ovations each time she manages to hook something on the fork.
I’m not sure how long we can keep this up…She is very proud.
So are we.