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Posted By A Son-Rise Message Board Participant on August 27, 1999 at 00:04:32:
Patrick started school again August 11th. He is in a great class. Three boys ages 5 and under (including Patrick, and one of Patrick's classmates is another Son-Rise family!, one teacher, one aide and one volunteer from the other Son-Rise family's program who needed to do some volunteer work in the public school system to get a teaching certificate at a local college -- she will be in there a few hours in the morning three days a week. Considering this is a public school, you couldn't ask for a better teacher-student ratio. The teacher and her aide (who was Patrick's aide last year) were fully versed on the attitudes and principles of Son-Rise. We shared a 20-minute video of his home program so they could see what we were accomplishing there and how we were getting this response, shared the BBC video, the audio cassettes -- everything I have.
The first day when I went in to pick him up, the teacher's pants were torn in the knee, and she was soooo excited to share with me that Patrick let her hold him today and she got him laughing when they were dancing silly around the room. I looked at her knee and said, "My kind of teacher!" That told me that she was getting on the floor with these guys and was really having fun. That was quite an honor that Patrick allowed her to hold him. I trust his judgment about people and was really excited that this was going to be a great year for him as he had a special teacher.
The second day, when I went in to pick him up, she was holding him and rocking him in her arms back and forth, his head resting on her shoulder. I was overwhelmed by the expression of love this woman had on her face as she held my son. It was so wonderful to see this bond being created between the two of them. When I came in, she told me a beautiful story about how it was just Patrick and N. today (I won't mention his name -- it's the other little boy, not the family doing Son-Rise). N. went to sleep on the floor. Patrick didn't want to sleep for his rest time and was wandering around the room. Then he sat down next to N. and reach over and started lovingly rubbing his back. She was going to redirect Patrick, but she saw N. wasn't being disturbed and just let him be. Then, Patrick snuggled up next to him (Patrick's head was on the floor and he was curled up in sort of a fetal position) and he had his arm around N.'s waist. WOW! She was so blown away and she took a picture of them sleeping side by side. The next day as I was driving up to the front of the school, she is jumping up and down waving this picture in his hand. She was so excited about it she left school and had the pictures immediately developed. It was so precious. I looked at the picture and I saw it -- the red blanket. I started laughing -- the red blanket N. had was the exact one that Patrick has and is now carrying around with him at home. At least he was trying to extract from N's body with love and affection! When I went to pick him up in the afternoon, his teacher said today Patrick took the blanket completely from N. Needless to say, Patrick got to have his red blanket at school on Monday!
We went to see his psychiatrist a week ago and he was blown away by the progress Patrick has made in one year. For 20 minutes he kept saying, wow, wow, wow, that's great, wow. And then, another awesome gift -- Patrick said a spontaneous, never-before-said word approximation right there in the office -- "a-gee" I was laying back down on the floor after having gotten up from a floor tickle game we were playing. He was saying "again." The doctor picked right up on that and said, I heard that! He was ever more excited when I said that was a first for Patrick. Never heard that word before that moment. Then, he was sitting on the floor while Patrick was sitting at the table putting his shapes into the shape sorter bucket. Then he said, "da-een." The doctor looked at him, and I said, Oh, he said he was done. And about 5 seconds later, Patrick was pushing himself from the table to get up from the chair. And the doctor said, Yep, guess he's done. He said we had done a fabulous job with Patrick. I told him all of Patrick's speech and his eye contact were a direct result of this program. While his teachers at school were working on "skills" in a very loving way, we were working on eye contact and language in his home program and the combination of the two were working out just wonderfully.
Patrick is continuing to make physical contact in a loving manner with this one little boy in the classroom. I am so proud. His teacher sent home a note today that said Patrick came to group time all by himself, sat the entire time and put his name (his name is on a laminated card) on the chart (Velcro board) when they were singing the song, "Look who came to school today." She has written notes to us many times since school has started, "thanks for sharing Patrick with me."
We are off to a great year. Now if I could only convince her to go to the start-up program! I keep working on her that it will be an experience that will change her life forever. I think she is going to be Patrick's teacher next year, too, and if he is really fortunate the year after that (since he is only 3-1/2, he will be in the same-level class until August 2001 when he will be old enough to attend kindergarten.
Will keep you all posted. I appreciate the opportunity to share all these things with all of you.
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