The latest adventure

Well, today was day three of Erica's latest adventure - Conductive Education, or CE. You can Google CE for any number of informative sites, so I won't go into detail about the principles of the program here. Suffice it to say that it is an overall philosophy of how to educate a person with a neurological impairment, such as CP, and the result is a program that resembles an OT/PT/speech and life skills training class all rolled into one. I've wanted to give it a try for Erica for some time, but not until a clinic opened in nearby Marysville did I get the motivation to follow through. Brighter Beginnings was started, as are most CE clinics, by a parent who wanted the program available to her child and turned that desire into a business opportunity, helping out other parents in the area who also wanted something closer to home.

So we are driving to Marysville every day for four weeks. Kinda rough in the gas usage department, but so far OK in all other aspects. The class meets from 9:30-12:30 each day, so we avoid the morning rush hour. Natalie takes along several kindergarten readiness workbooks, coloring books and magazines. We are spending about an hour each day on school-related stuff, which is WAY more than I would make time for during summer break if we were at home, so that is a big plus for the little sis. I have a few friends in Marysville whom I never get to visit (we always meet in the middle when we do brunch), so that is nice as well.

Parents are not typically encouraged to observe CE classes, but at this clinic they keep the curtain open on the two-way mirror/window for a few days so we can get a feel for what they are doing in there. I know that, similar to the intensive PT programs we've attended, there will be a home program given at the end for follow-up and continued progress after the class ends. I'm assuming that means we'll be allowed to observe again at some point, otherwise how do we really know what we are supposed to be doing?

Another interesting aspect of this experience is that the conductors (they are highly trained at the Peto Institute in Hungary, but they are not therapists), being Hungarian, have strong accents and their command of the English language is good but not easily fluent. Communicating with them is sometimes frustrating. We were encouraged to bring a notebook in which they would document what the class is doing and progress being made, but as of day 3 there is only one entry and it mainly praises Erica for being well-behaved and a model student. Cool! But that doesn't tell me what she's doing. I don't get much from her, either. Yes, it's a blessing that Erica can communicate verbally to an extent. But when questioned about details of her day she usually says "I dunno." Come to think of it, maybe that's typical behavior for a 9-year-old ;)

My observations thus far have been that they are doing some interesting activities: circle-time type greetings at first, then some floor time for stretching and range-of-motion work; a walking program and time to work on individual goals - rolling, crawling, pushing up to sit... wherever they are at. They eat lunch together at a table, and this provides the opportunity to work on self-feeding skills, use of utensils, social skills and washing up. I have heard them sing songs together and seen them talking about some topic (plants, according to the written report on the first day... but what aspect of plants I know not).

In general, my first impression is that Erica is not as challenged by this program as she is by intensive therapy programs, where she gets one-on-one attention and focuses intensely on a small number of targeted goals. Here, she is one of three or four students, and when she completes a task she often sits and waits for the others to complete the same task, creating "down time" that doesn't exist in intensive therapies. She also is slightly older and a bit further along in developmental stages, so I wonder if she were in a class with other kids of her same abilities if it would be more challenging for her. It's not really fair to compare CE to intensive PT, it's kind of like apples and oranges. But since that is our prior experience, it's natural for me to weigh the costs and benefits of each against each other when assessing the effectiveness of the program.

The jury is definitely still out! We are just getting started, and I haven't had a chance to talk with anyone about specific goals for Erica - it's all new territory so I'm laying back for a bit and just observing. Stay tuned for more impressions in days to come...