More progress

On Monday October 5th, the day after my last entry about Jade's progress at school, I was officially sent home while she was at school! For the first part of the time she sent me to a pathway only about a minute's walk from our house, and then about 20 minutes before I was due to pick her up again, I got a call on my mobile saying that Jade said I could go home. Wahoo!! On the following day, she agreed I could go home straight after dropping her off, and that's how it's been ever since. I still can't get over how rapid her progress has been.

Also on that Tuesday, she started to extend her time being at school. She agreed to go and have a look at the maths lesson which occurs after break, just to see what it was like. Fortunately (she is rather maths-averse!) it seemed a fairly easy lesson on measuring, so although she only stayed 5 or 10 minutes that first time, she agreed to stay for longer the next day. She enjoyed the time they spent going round the school measuring things, so from the Thursday onwards she stayed all through the maths lesson and I started to pick her up at 12.10pm. That week she also started to do some reading in other parts of the school rather than just the TA's office. One day they went and sat in a cupboard (!) by the main corridor, and she managed to continue reading while people walked by - which is such a major achievement for her!

The following week her TA started to introduce other children into her talking sessions. She firstly introduced one girl who was nearby while Jade played Snap with the TA, and then progressed to playing directly with the girl - the first child she has spoken to in school! A day or two later (this is just last week) there wasn't anywhere else for them to go apart from the classroom, and Jade managed to play Snap with this girl with a whole load of other kids standing round watching - and listening!!! Oh how I wish I'd been there to see that! I don't know exactly how much talking she did while playing, but when I played that game with her we were encouraging her to say the name of the thing on each card as she put it down, so I think that's probably what she has continued doing.

And then on Thursday when I went to look at sofas (and ended up buying one - oops, didn't quite mean that to happen!) you wouldn't have known there was anything unusual about this girl at all. Despite me having quite a bit of conversation with a salesman, she was talking out loud and completely freely to Shannon and myself, with no lowering of her voice or hesitation at all. She didn't speak directly to the salesman, but when she had moved away and I just mentioned how amazed I was at what she was doing, he said he would never have known she had any sort of a problem!