after school speech part 17

On Thursday, I took SJ to his weekly speech session. (He would have rather had my husband take him, but I wanted to go over his test results with his therapist.) She had given him the TOPS3 test (Test of Problem Solving). He was shown a picture and he had to answer various questions. He was under the benchmark in all of the categories, but he especially struggled with inferences and predictions. (None of this was a surprise to me!) I told her that I assumed that those would have been his areas of deficit. Now we know what we have to work on.

As a special needs mom, I always want to know the truth about where his weaknesses are. I don't want things sugar coated for us. I can't help him (or get him help) if I don't know exactly where he stands. I am glad she was able to share his test results with me.

This week she continued to work on Problems and Solutions with SJ. She did a worksheet with him that showed him a picture of an old man and he looked ill. It had a caption that said "Loren's grandpa felt dizzy when he came out of the store. Loren told him to sit down and rest, but then he got sicker." SJ had to answer "What is the problem?" He answered that Grandpa is sick. His therapist asked him who the story was about. He answered Loren and her grandpa. He then had to give his therapist five ways that Loren could solve the problem. He came up with the first one easily. He said she could make him feel better. This was very vague, so his therapist prompted him with a How prompt. SJ answered that she could get him medicine.

SJ was still having trouble, so his therapist told him to think about how he would want someone to help him. He then answered that she could take him to the hospital, she could call 911 and she could call her parents. I thought that was a good strategy that the therapist used. It seemed to have helped SJ to try to put himself in grandpa's shoes.

She also did a worksheet without pictures. He needed to tell his therapist what the problem was in each situation. He had some difficulty identifying the problems in a few of the situations. An example: There is a student sitting in your desk and he will not leave. He needed to answer that the problem is that he cannot take his assigned seat in the classroom. She said that when she prompted SJ with "It's a problem because..." he was able to answer the situation a little more easily. We will be working on these situations this week for homework.