After a day of evaluations, we spent our first full day working at Learning Spot Guatemala! We were blessed to work with seven amazing kiddos, their parents, eager interns, and the staff! We are priveledged to have a working partnership with Learning Spot Guatemala where we return yearly (if not sooner) to update treatment plans and help with new kiddos.
That being said, we were able to see several familiar faces, including sweet Karlita. She had very little communication last year and became frustrated easily because she had no way to tell others what she wanted or needed. Our speech therapist, Paige, worked very hard with her last year to develop a picture exchange system of communication. She was happy to see that Karla was still using her PECS book to communicate and her mom had continued to work with her in our absence. Kara, our other speech therapist, was excited to work with a sweet little boy on his oral motor skills. He was not much of a talker before she did the oral motor exercises, but after Kara worked with him he began making a lot of bilabial sounds and babbling more!
It was a busy day in for the physical therapists! Their room was filled with interns and Eric and Sherrie got a chance to teach them about each child's gait pattern and what could be done to correct some of their issues. Thanks to Diana, the founder and owner of Learning Spot, Sherrie and Eric were able to use videos of each kiddo to analyze gait patterns. Eric also got to work with Learning Spot PT, Gabby and intern Alejandra to build an orthotic for a sweet girl named Emma. Together, they were able to build an orthotic she liked and felt comfortable in to help correct and compensate for her leg length discrepency. Eric was also able to relay the importance of how gross motor activities can coincide with sensory activities for Karla, an idea he will expand on when he is able to collaborate more with Katie and Mary, the TEAMworks OTs.
Difficult behaviors are something that effect parents across the world, from small temper tantrums to uncontrollable, unsafe meltdowns. On Saturday, Katie (OT) evaluated a sweet kiddo whose mom's main concern was behavior. On occasion, the methods used to address behavior can be difficult to understand and seem counterintuitive to your traditional responses to behavior. With this in mind, Katie was apprehensive, yet hopeful, about how today might go! She used the trampoline as a reinforcer for good work and every time he placed a puzzle piece in, drew a line, etc. they bounced on the trampoline. He loved it and worked great for the entire session!
We are off to a great start and look forward to what the rest of the week has to hold!