I've been feeling very defeated by epilepsy lately.
In addition to his daily 4-5 seizures, Trevor has had two of his larger events in the past two weeks. One of them resulted in calling rescue. Thankfully, the seizure broke before they arrived and we could decline a ride to the hospital. Even still. There are no words in our language to describe the groanings of our hearts during his big seizures and the aftermath is so very difficult to navigate emotionally.
I spent the weekend fighting off the frost of heart-numbness by revamping our school system. He's been so fatigued that focusing on specific subjects daily just isn't working. I've heard of and used loop schedules before but have never tried to loop everything. I decided that's what we needed to do. Just keep a looping list of every.single.thing and work through whatever we can each day. I needed to take the pressure off of both of us, while still pushing forward.
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| the loop list represents our 1:1 work only in addition to this we have two group times each day as well |
At the top of my loop list I have several boxes for our integrated therapeutic goals. Rather than separate these, I try to include things ,like fine motor and speech opportunities, into his every day life. One goal for myself is to encourage him to do more for himself and stop intervening so quickly. For instance, today we had a cutting activity and he had to ask me to let him cut it himself! Having that list at the top of our loop list helps me remember the targets we're currently working towards. I have Speech, Gross Motor, Fine Motor, Life Skills, and Sensory Diet boxes.
For my actual loop list I have a box for the date, number of minutes spent per subject, and the actual activity we'll work on. I made sure to leave enough room so I can jot notes to myself beside each subject. I tried to alternate activities so that we will accomplish a little math and a little reading daily, plus other less academic studies. I'm still tweaking, but I'm hopeful this will help us feel less stressed out and allow the flexibility his seizures require. Oh, and I was really ambitious and even created a % independent box which I hope to start collecting data. While I'm a little too gentle to be full-on ABA, I have learned to appreciate how helpful data collection can be.
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| exterior of his laminated flow folder |
I also made him what I'm calling a "flow folder". It's similar to a choice board folder, only, well, he doesn't get to choose. Our flow list leads the way. Other than Bible, which I have schedule daily for him. He adores SuperBook and What's in the Bible. I let him watch one dvd for his Bible time, which he can and enjoys doing independently, and allows me to do 1:1 math with his sister.
I also created a static daily chores list and because it's laminated, he can use a dry erase marker to check off the tasks he's completed.
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| interior of his laminated flow folder |
We use an adapted form of the workbox system with great success, so I made sure to make all of his flow board choices to match the labels on his workboxes. Honestly, the workbox is already a sanity saving staple for me. I have a feeling this loop list might be the same!
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