Therapy has begun!!!

We had our workshop day last Wednesday and that began Stephanie's first official day of intensive home therapy. This will continue for at least a year and then Stephanie will have to qualify for another year and at last a 3rd year. She receives about 25 face to face hours of therapy from a team of therapist. She met them all on Wednesday and had no problem warming up to them. For the first month they are just going to follow her lead and get her to fall in love with them before they really start teaching or demanding things from her. They will do a lot of teaching and reinforcing during her play but will also do some table time work. Every time they are playing with something they repeat the word 3 times, something I find myself doing already. She will also be taught some signs and will give it a 90 day trial to see if it helps her communicate. Right now she will start out working on 5 signs. She had her first therapy session last Friday for 2 hours and did great. She had a couple whining moments but had lots of fun with the therapist. Today she had 2 sessions, each session is 2 hours long, and all was going great until the last 45 minutes. She was asked to put her smoothie cup away and she didn't want to. But the therapist would not have it. When they ask her to do something, whether a word, action, or task, they won't let her get her way. She had a full blown tratrum for 45 minutes. She wasn't allowed to go anywhere, do anything else, or play with anything until she put her cup away. The therapist also said "put your cup away" every 3-5 seconds the whole time she was having the tatrum. Stephanie is very stubborn and I think she has met her match. All of her therapists have been pretty easy on her but when you only have 45-60 minutes once a week it's hard to have anything accomplished when she is crying for 45 minutes so most of them are very easy on her. They just kind of let her do what she wants but that is also why she hasn't made much progress. Now it is time for the real work to be done. Tomorrow and Wednesday she just has one session but 2 on Thursday and then 3 on Friday. She will sure be busy.