Ready for preschool.

On Thursday, the consultant for our school district came out to see how Wes was doing. He does this about once a month. Wes was totally on his game and did an amazing job. I made sure he took a nice long nap. He showed how well he's retained everything that has been trained and even things that were just recently trained. His mind is certainly a sponge. The consultant (I'll call him B) said that it was time to move onto the Mayer Johnson, black and white, and line drawing pictures. These will help him understand generalization more. For those who don't know, Mayer Johnson pictures are the more commonly used pictures for the PECS system.

Wes' therapist (D) started with a picture of a soccer ball, a shoe and a crayon. She asked him to match the pictures at first which he did with no problem whatsoever. Every time he made a match, she would clearly say what the picture was. B wanted to see if he could identify them even though he just saw these pictures for the first time. Amazingly, he identified crayon correctly! I was blown away. He hasn't heard the word crayon all that often. He's used them before, but I've never really identified it (why I don't know). He needed help identifying the ball and the shoe. She had to reiterate what they were and the next time she asked, he got them right!

B made the comment that there was nothing wrong with Wes' intelligence. For some reason, that just put me completely as ease. Was it because he's a professional and deals with children like Wes on a daily basis? Maybe it is because it's hard for me to understand him. I don't really know. What I do know is that my boy is so smart and can do anything he puts his mind to. He may need to be shown how to do it more then other children, but he can do it just as well.

B also said that he was certainly ready for preschool. They will focus more on his social skills because they won't need to extensively train him anymore. They won't need to train how to match objects or how to label them once he's heard them. This is a big deal. It's typically where children need to start when they begin preschool. I'm very anxious for the socialization to start. I try taking him everywhere (park, play dates, open gyms) for socialization, but to no avail.

So the countdown begins. Just over 2 months to go.