Patrick's Big Day!

Well Patrick had a big day today! No, don't get all excited thinking this is about potty training. He's only sitting on the potty but no interest in anything coming out yet! Anyway, Patrick had his first day at the USF Preschool Program for Speech today. This happened so fast so let me back up.

Mondays & Wednesday Matthew attends individual speech therapy @ USF's Speech Clinic and one of the Clinical Directors mentioned to me that I should consider getting Patrick in as well. This is partly because certain speech dysfluencies are hereditary & Patrick recently starting exhibiting one type of dysfluency that Matthew has & that I had as a child. I know everyone has their own opinions of speech development & speech therapy and yes, both he & Matthew could very well progress normally & outgrow it. But...they could also benefit from some help - suddenly working with an 8 or 9 year old who didn't outgrow the dysfluency or learn to overcome issues with tongue movement, etc. is MUCH harder to do & to progress with. My SIL is a speech therapist that specializes in children & she had her own clinic for children as well as teaching Speech Therapy at Seton Hall and she has always told me, 90% of children can benefit from speech therapy at some point. Sure, they might luck out and figure it out on their own or it may naturally develop but why wait & see vs. giving them some help. O.k, I'm done....really. Back to Patrick.

So......anyway, the Clinical Director told me to fill out an application for Patrick and I turned it in to her last week. On Monday while we were there for Matthew's appt, she saw me and brought out a man, Dr. Constantine (a PhD in Speech Therapy/Audiology) and introduced us. He runs a Preschool Speech Program at USF and invited us to join in for the rest of the semester (only a few weeks) and invited us to attend the fall semester. This program provides a preschool-like atmosphere for 2 & 3 year olds with songs, craft, clean up, playtime, snack time...all using speech therapy in disguise. There are 4 graduate level Speech Therapy Clinicians & Dr. Constantine running the group of approx 5 children. The group speech therapy is an hour, from 9-10 and then after the "preschool" group they provide an hour of individual speech therapy for each child. It is amazing and you would not even believe how incredibly affordable, ridiculously affordable it is.

So Patrick started today - he did great ! I was worried that it might hit him so unexpectedly and that he may really put up a fuss but he did incredibly and warmed up well. There is a one way glass room adjacent for the parents to sit & watch the whole time. The parents stay the whole time - since it is speech therapy not a real preschool but we aren't in the room. Matthew brought a lot to do and we watched Patrick for a while then went out to the waiting room and Matthew did some activities. It does make for a LONG day since then Matthew has his own speech therapy from 2-3 and I'm not driving back and forth twice from Brandon to USF. So after Patrick's ended we spent the afternoon at MOSI and saw a new IMAX film, had lunch and headed over for Matthew's therapy. In the fall it will be just Patrick going so not as taxing of a day.

The other really great thing I found is that the Clinical Director & Dr. Constantine, apparently because I was fine with coming for just part of the semester, allowed me to bypass the wait list and since we are technically enrolled in the summer program now I was able to seamlessly roll him over to the fall semester. Otherwise there might have been a wait. So lucky for us!