I can't believe how much has changed in the past two years. Melanie has continued to make tremendous progress. She is now in 1st grade and excelling in school. She still struggles with paying attention and following directions but it's something that we are working on. First grade started out a little rocky but only because the teacher was not aware what Autism looks like. Thanks to Ms. Nichols, for always supporting Melanie. The new teacher has been able to make modifications to help support Melanie's needs. As for therapies, she only receives them once a week. She receives 30 minutes each of speech and occupational. She is doing so well. At school, she no longer receives services but Mrs. Basteda still checks up on Melanie once a month.
I enjoy that I can have conversations with Melanie. That is something that I didn't think would happen but I'm so glad I was wrong. We have also transitioned from a 5 point harness carseat to a booster seat. She is now able to sit still in the booster seat and not remove the seatbelt. Which was one of my biggest worries. She says she loves it because she's a big girl now and I know she feels more independent. As for myself, that was something that was hard to let go.
She is also reading now. She struggled in kindergarten and in the start of this year but now she likes to read everything in sight. She is handling transitions better and hardly has any meltdowns. Maturity wise, she is still a little behind compared to her peers. I hope it doesn't become so obvious as she grows. As for foods, she has opened up to trying new foods. That doesn't mean she will eat it all but at least she tastes it. The other day they had a Chinese New Years party at school and she ate dumplings. I was shocked. She kept asking for more once she was at home. Our local Chinese restaurant sells dumplings so I ordered her some and to my surprise she ate 4 of them. I'm so glad that she is enjoying new foods.
Melanie also has a new baby nephew whom she adores. She is so great with him. She's like a mommy to him. I love to see them interact and play together. It's amazing to see how developmentally different they are. Grayson is doing things that Melanie didn't at his age and for that I am thankful. He is helping me realize how far Melanie has come and now I don't worry so much about her future like I did before. Yes I will still worry but that's what moms do.
Melanie gets invited to a lot of birthday parties and she loves it. The best part is that parents don't notice her disability and neither do her peers. Yesterday, Melanie was upset because the book fair closed and it was too late to purchase the toy she wanted. I asked her a few times to put her backpack up but she couldn't focus on the words because she was upset. One of her peers overheard me asking her to put her backpack up. He came over and hung her backpack for her. He didn't make fun of her for crying and he didn't question her. He simply took the backpack from my hand and hung it. I thought that was so sweet of him to do that. I hope Melanie continues to meet people that will be nice and understanding to her needs.
In the fall of 2014 after Melanie had turned 6, we decided to have her re-evaluated. After being told that she no longer had autism but simply ADHD, I knew something wasn't right. I spend hours doing research on what exactly is ADHD and what the signs were. In my search, I never found the signs Melanie showed as a toddler. Those signs kept leading me back to autism. For the next evaluation, I presented the evaluation from 2010, 2012 and a form filled out by the pre-k teacher and kindergarten teacher. I wanted to make sure the psychologist had all the information available.
