Listening Therapy

Hello Wednesday!  This week has been a little better then last week but I am still looking forward to next week when ESY begins.  Jack will have an abbreviated day but I think he will benefit from getting some structured classroom time.  The kids and I have had a very relaxing morning which include Jack's new favorite breakfast scrambled eggs and we even took a trip to target to buy more eggs :-) 

Today marks day 3 of doing Listening Therapy with Jack.  This is a therapy we will (work up to doing) everyday for 30 minutes- broken up into two 15 minute sessions.  This week we have been working on him getting use to the head phones and learning that mommy is the only one allowed to put them on and take them off.  So far he has been doing very well with that rule.  My goal for the first few weeks is to get him comfortable with the idea and not to push him to hard and do my best to keep him from becoming frustrated and upset.  I showed him the new pecs card that says "all done" and he has used that a few times to tell me he wants to be done.  I will then tell him ok and do a verbal and finger count down from 5 and then remove the head phones and say "all done" then we end with a high five.  I have been trying to do a couple sessions with him while Peyton takes her nap so we don't have any distractions, and yesterday we got very close to hitting that 15 minute mark.  Fifteen minutes may sound like a short amout of time, but when you are trying to keep a toddler destracted and prevent him from ripping off his headphones it can feel like a lifetime. While he listens we have been play with cars, stack books, do puzzles, any type of play that keeps his interested and I also use lots of edible reinforcers.  The past few day's that has been rice cakes :-)  This is a very new experience for him and he was never a child that enjoyed wearing hats or having anything on his head so seeing him wear the head phones for long periods of time is a check in the victory column.  This therapy was recommended to use by his Occupational Therapist.  We purchased the head phones and mp3 player and Our Children's House Baylor is loaning us the music which will get changed up every 2 weeks. 

Here is a web site I found that explains Listening Therapy and its benefits in more detail.
http://www.advancedbrain.com/the-listening-program/the-listening-program.html

I hope everyone is having a nice week and here are a few pictures of Jack during his Listening Therapy session we had today.