Just a quick update for those of you wondering about our Family Hope Center program and how that is going.

We have been working our way up in the creeping/crawling department. Since that helps strengthen/develop (whatever you’d like to call it–improve) the lowest parts of the brain and help things like basic reflexes and focus, as well as provide exercise, that is what I’m focusing on first. We are up to 10 laps of crawling and 50 laps of creeping at this point. It is now, obviously, taking more time and has lots its glamour (for the boys) from when we started. The boys don’t think it’s a game anymore. :) It’s a good lesson in perseverance and cause/effect. For example, you chose to play Legos for ten minutes instead of doing your laps when Mommy asked, so you ended up missing the beginning of your show because you had to finish. And we all know Aspies and 5 year olds don’t love cause/effect. ha ha

Our life has been a bit chaotic lately so I haven’t added the other components. I figured if I could be consistent with the laps and continue to build up, that that was better than nothing. Next week I’m going to add in the three sessions of smell therapy to start helping with emotional things.

Someone left a comment wondering how it’s going three months after the seminar. I have been working on laps for about a month and a half. I was already doing much of the nutrition part of FHC’s philosophy and had started working on the sleep issue as well–getting rid of “bed time movie”. It is really hard for me to say because Dr. J has made so much improvement over the last four years. I don’t know that I’m seeing a change from the laps yet. I will be able to tell more when I do a six-month checkup with the developmental sheet. I did notice that his thumb/fist reflex has changed a bit. When you make a fist, where is your thumb? His was inside his fist when I did the original assessment. Last time I looked at it when he was boxing with Daddy, I noticed his thumb was in front of and across his fingers like it should be, then he moved it to the side. But, that is a noticeable and measurable improvement, since it’s a reflex and I have not trained him on it.

In other news, because of the program, my homeschool focus right now is math, reading, and one extra study from an interest. That means we are just finishing up a unit study on cicadas. I’m going to write more about that on another day. Yesterday I got a football unit study that we’ll start next week. They’ve been enjoying watching football with Daddy and I thought that would be a fun next choice.

They’re both doing All About Reading, and I will also incorporate sight words for Meatball, because I think he’s going to be wired that way. Dr. J finished Math-U-See Beta and is in a review holding pattern. Meatball has shown he knows more math concepts than I realized (he still writes numbers backwards a good deal), so he’s going to start Alpha on Monday. Online chess class started this week, library story time starts next week, and we decided to start our own cooking class, so I think they’ve got plenty going on.

Well, that’s it, folks. Hope you have a great Wednesday!