Today was an interesting day.
In the morning, Jake and I went to The McCarton Center in Manhattan and had an oral motor consultation. According to the therapist who saw him, his jaws are always fixed; he won’t open his mouth big enough to brush his teeth; his tongue, lips, cheeks are very low toned; his jaws are weak especially on his left side; he has very little disassociation amongst his head, jaw, lips and tongue; and his breaths are very shallow; he can not blow bubbles, or any toy whistle or horn, etc… which by the way all of her observations were true. So I guess there was a good reason for the consultation after all. I heard from another mom that the therapists at McCarton Center specialize in oral motor, so I decided to give a try. I am still not 100% sure that any of the techniques I learned from the session will in fact help Jake but I am going to give the techniques a try. My goal is to do at least one session of oral motor activities with Jake each day. I was told that once I master the techniques, it shouldn't take longer than 10 mins for each session. So that doesn't sound too bad. In the short term, I am hoping at least he can become less orally defensive, and in the long term, I am hoping that he can produce more sounds.
So back to our interesting day today. In the afternoon, Jake was invited to the Yoga Integral Institute where Ms. Sonia Sumer was giving a week long Yoga for the Special Child®, LLC Seven-Day Certification Course. Ms. Sonia did a demonstration of basic yoga movements with Jake in front of her class. Even though Jake needed hand over hand for all of the movements, he listened to her directions and participated to the best of his ability I think. I asked Ms. Sonia afterwards what can Jake most benefit from doing Yoga, she said deeper breathing, increase awareness of his body, and improvement in attention and focus. All pretty good stuff. One of the OTs who attended the class said she can teach me some basic breathing techniques to work with Jake, so I am looking forward to that.
Ok, that was our day...
