Today, Dan, myself and my mom begin the Blue Stars Therapy’s Parent Empowerment Program! We are very excited to have this opportunity to partake in such a great program. It is a 12 week course designed to provide us tools and strategies in our day to day with Jackson and help him down a positive developmental path. Some of you might be thinking, “Why on earth would you need to be taught how to interact with your child?” To be honest, I might have had that same mindset if I did not have a child with Fragile X, but if you have spent anytime with a child with any type of developmental/intellectual disability, they need additional support and learn in different ways, so raising Jackson the same way we raise Carter would set him up for failure in life.
In taking this 12 week course it will allow Dan, myself and my mom (who is also taking this course) to be a lifelong advocate for Jackson and teach others how to interact with him, help them understand how he learns and what works best for him overall. The first chapter we have been assigned is called Capturing your Child’s Attention. This is huge, because if we are not able to get his attention and hold it, he will not be able to learn from our behaviors, words, etc. One big thing you notice with Jackson is he would much rather engage with an object than a person and our first chapter explains that. With a person, you never know the behaviors/reactions you will get with them. In other words, a person is unpredictable. With an object such as his activity table or slide, he knows what to expect with it. He will put a ball at the top of the table and it will go down the ramp and he will repeat that for a while or he will climb up and go down the slide over and over. That remains constant on how it will play out, there is nothing out of the ordinary that happens and for someone like Jackson that is what he likes. So, how do you get his attention away from things like that and help him focus on you? Well, we are about to find out!
My goal is to update you on our progress with this program and share things others might find helpful. The book we are working out of is called An Early Start for Your Child with Autism and while Jackson is not on the Spectrum, Fragile X kids do exhibit similar traits and there is a percentage of children with Fragile X that are also on the spectrum, which I mentioned in previous posts. This book has proven methods based on the Early Start Denver Model (ESDM), which our therapist teaches Jackson. You can find this book on Amazon, Target or Audible. So, check it out!
Stay healthy, friends!
XOXO
Our Fragile Xperience 