Small (ok they never are) update on us...

I hate to say the cliche "we're so busy" but we are. December brought us another hurdle in the life of Cowboy. This little man is just the poster child for the little train that could. As some backgrounder info for those just tuning into my life, Cowboy has a lot of different learning and processing disorders. He's been through TONS, did I say TONS? I don't think that's even an appropriate word for it. He's been through GOBS - that doesn't do it either. He's been through a lifetime of developmental therapy in his short 10 years. When he was 18 months - we started with 6-7 various therapies a week - two speech, two OT and two PT. Needless to say - busy was an understatement at that time. All of our appts were 20 miles from here so it also took a lot of driving time. January always brings new fights with insurance, social security and 'the system'. JOY!! January is also my time of reflection and my time to set some goals for what I want him to accomplish.


I am VERY proud to say my boy has shined through the years. He NEVER complains about his therapy appts, does his 'homework' without a blink of an eye (although it's proving to be harder lately) and he's made leaps and bounds. At the age of 4 only 30% of what he said was intelligible by someone other than ourselves. He still has his moments - but everyone can understand him now with 95-98% intelligibility. He still has his physical challenges here and there - but he's quickly overcoming every single one of those - he's getting stronger and stronger. I do have to credit football with a majority of that though. No amount of PT can ever work ALL his muscles the way those workouts do. His horseback riding helps too. Occupational - fine motor skills still suffer - we have to get in every few years to get him back up to speed. He desperately needs to get back in but we have to feed the most delayed hand first so to speak (funding issue since insurance doesn't cover much). We'll probably get something moving this summer or in the fall for OT or try to work in an every other week sort of thing. When you start to resolve one issue - you usually uncover another and that is what we have done.


At his doc visit at the end of Sept, they checked his eyes and he was weak in one eye so I made him an appt with the eye doc. I knew there was a possibility (the uncovering thing I just talked about) that he had some visual processing issues so I researched and researched and found the right doc we needed to see. Turns out he is nearsighted in one of his eyes, he needed glasses but he suggested further testing. We had to wait for the scheduling, etc....and finally in December we got our appt.


$400 later and my poor poor boy has a new, exciting...goal. The doc even mentioned with everything he has going on it would be hard to pinpoint this as possibly an underlying issue. He's grossly delayed in his visual processing and vision motor functions. What this means to me is that he has been accomodating for so long, it's had to be frustrating. To give you an example, an average person reading a certain paragraph fixates (focuses) their eyes on the page 150 times. His eyes fixated 508 times on the same paragraph. The child has machine gun focusing on a paragraph, sentence, or word. The average scores in all the different tests (there were tons) they gave him is 50% his HIGHEST was 37% and 25% on two sections - the rest were BELOW 9%. My poor boy. I just wanted to cry for him. We very rarely dwell on the negative and we trudge on and start in the fixing stage. He has already started vision therapy - he goes once a week and has 30-45 mins of homework each night....6 nights a week. We hope by the end of the year, most of his vision problems will be a thing of the past.

So that is why I have been so absent. It's been hard adding this extra baggage to the 'flight plan' of a regular homeschooling day, field trips, therapy appts and regular every day life stuff. Not to mention - fulfilling the obligations at Itchy's school - picking him up every day, field trips, class parties, etc. Oh...and of course getting some 'me' time with girlfriend shopping Thursdays. We are slowly working into a more comfortable schedule but it's taking time so please bear with me. We aren't even doing school in our classroom (where I usually wrote my entries) at the moment because I felt he needed new scenery to rekindle his desire to dive into action after Christmas. Plus with how cold it is - it's been nice to sit on the couch and do some lessons. I love that about homeschooling Cowboy - especially when like today he said "I really love this Mommy, thank you". When I asked him what...he clarified that he loved being able to cuddle and do school at the same time. I couldn't be more proud and it revitalizes me when I see him inspire others through his progress and gentle heart.