Wednesday, January 4, 2012

The PoWer of Son-Rise and a determined MoM :)

WoW!!  I mean WOW!!!

What a great day we have had today.  It started off with Hayden waking up at 8 am.  He is normally up and ready to rock at 5:30 am so this was a HUGE blessing :)

Hayden had a 3.5 hour therapy session with Carleen this morning and it went well as usual.  His legos frustrated him because they wouldn't do what he wanted but other than that it was a good session.

He transitioned to lunch well and did 1.5 hours of hbot with Daddy.  He got out we snuggled a bit and then he played monsters with Ruby.

In between this we snuck his vitamins in here and there.

Then Aunt Suzanne came to watch Ruby so I could work with Hayden.  We had an AMAZING Son-Rise therapy session tonight.  The 2 hour session flew by.

I was better prepared for the therapy session than normal with two specific games planed and I focused on  one goal tonight as opposed to focusing on all three of Hayden's goals.  The goal that I focused on was to look at me to start or maintain and interaction i.e better eye contact :)

For now on I am going to just focus on one goal per therapy session.  This worked a ton better for Hayden!!  He gave me eye contact every time I requested except for two times and by the end of the session I didn't even have to ask for it.  He just looked me in the eyes with his beautiful big brown puppy dog eyes and eyelashes that grown women envy.  When our eyes connect it melts my heart every time :)

Out of the entire two hours of the therapy session I only had to join Hayden in a stim for about 10 minutes total!!

The first activity that I set out was to massage Hayden with lotion.  I was truly shocked how much he enjoyed it.  We did this activity for a total of 40 minutes, yes you read right 40 minutes!!!  I had 40 minutes of pure connection with Hayden and I have to tell you it was AMAZING.  I massaged his legs, arms, hands, feet, and belly.  I used deep pressure (which is what he prefers), light pressure, tickling, and tapping.  I had him request and give me eye contact to continue messaging and what type, and where he wanted messaged.  I told him how much I love him, how proud I am of him, and how amazing he is while messaging him.  I got tearful while giving him his message and he sat up (he was sitting back on his bean bag so he was at ideal level to make eye contact with me).  Hayden sat up and wiped my tear away with his hand.  I still can't believe he did this!!!

While messaging Hayden I was having flashbacks of how much he use to despise being touched and not like being messy at all.  Here we sat with me messaging lotion all over him and Hayden was LOVING it. I must saying I was LOVING it too :)  I tried to get him to message my hands and he said no, massage me!!

Hayden was so calm, relaxed, and still while I massaged him.  All of these are things that Hayden is usually the direct opposite of!!  LOVE it :)

The next activity I planed was to play with the dry erase dice I recently got him (thanks to a fellow Son-Rise mom for the idea).  I wrote things such as tickle, jump high, spin jump, cow, and sheep on it.  We would throw the dice and act out what was wrote on it.  Hayden wasn't really into this.  I think it would work better with pictures on it for us.  So for our therapy session tomorrow I will have picture drawn on the dice ahead of time.  Here is a picture of the dice.  I ordered it off of amazon.


The last activity was rubber banding his cars to the rope connected to his pulley system.  Hayden was HUGELY into this activity.  I am proud of this activity because I just came up with it while in the room working with Hayden.  The best thing about this is Hayden had to have me put the rubber bands on the rope and attach the cars to the rope.  I requested that he tell me where on the rope, give me the rubber bands, and help hold the car while attaching it.  I got all sorts of eye contact and language out of this activity with out requesting it.  We did this activity for about 35 minutes.

We bought all supplies at a local hardware store.  We also have buckets that we attach to one end of the rope and ping pong balls that we put in the buckets.  Hayden likes to raise the buckets with the pulley and let go so the ping pong balls fly out.

This is what the rope looked like attached to his shelf with a magnet and pulley system

Close us of the cars attached with a rubber band

The pulley, rope, and magnet.  We put foam around the magnet so if it fell it cushioned the impact some.  We also have  a 25 lbs break aways safety feature.  We installed this after Hayden wrapped the rope around his neck and tried to jump off his slide.
Hayden's Aunt Sheila made him a GEO board for Christmas.  You can make all sorts of shapes and patterns with the rubber bands.  You can also strum the rubber bands to make music.  It is a peg board with bolts and nuts.


I felt so connected with Hayden tonight while working with him.   The best part is that we both had fun and enjoyed what we were doing together!!  I LOVE the Son-Rise program and highly recommend it!!

Hayden came in after therapy and shared with swing with his cousin Carly! 
They were both happy to be swinging together.


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