7-4-2010

Lemar´t having fun at the pool during therapy.

The kids were happy coz they won stars on their faces during group behavioral therapy!

Jomi tried on the balancing beam while Samanta encouraging her.

Marcos on the balancing beam first.

Lemar´t pretended eating an orange.

I felt quite accomplished today as Lemar't finally is making some progress in pronouncing more than 1 syllable words! In fact, I've changed the schedule a bit so I'm doing therapy with him daily, while maintaining other therapy schedules. He has shown a lot of signs having some sort of developmental disorder, but we can't do assessment unless we are sure as it's too expensive here. Anyway, I suggested to do more intensive therapy with him for a couple months and see how it goes. If there are still going slow and he show more signs of developmental disorder, we can request an assessment for him. Anyway, it's going well, but definitely he's not yet learning in a normal speed as other kids are. The rest are doing very well in behavioral therapy, and I'm happy to see them become more positive and strive to be better! The result is really astonishing by just changing the environment from negative to positive! One thing I had them rid of was that they always said "no" to the caretakers during daily routines, and believe me, it's contagious! But little did they know that I'm a compliance control freak, now they know better not to say no all the time! Haha

On the other hand, a teenaged boy, Luis Torres, came up to me and told me he's kinda sad because he missed his mom. I felt for him, and really there's nothing to do except giving him a long big hug and told him that I'm here for him. His academic level is very behind and comprehension is very low. Nonetheless, he loves to learn and always want to learn more things. It's taught me that we really should treasure our strengths and abilities that God has granted to us and use them fully, wise and as much as we can.