Dear family and friends
Grayson had a good day today. According to his residential assistant (RA), he was well behaved all evening. He did his chores with minimal prompting, and did his therapeutic home program (THP) before dinner.
I used the word "prompting" and I think it would be informative for you to understand how and why that is used. On all of Grayson's activities of daily living (ADL) he is graded by his RA. The lowest scores are given if the task has to be accomplished for him. The highest score is given if he accomplishes the task with no reminder, hint or prompting. If he were to come back to the residence and start doing laundry because it is Tuesday, then he would get the highest score possible for that ADL. If he had to be reminded that it was Tuesday, a lower score. If he had to be reminded that it was Tuesday and to check his list of chores, yet again a lower score. If in addition to all of this, his RA pointed to the washing machine, a lower score. If the RA said, "Grayson, it's time to do your laundry", a lower score again. If the RA had to do the laundry for him, he would receive the lowest score. (Why didn't I have this when the kids were teenagers?) The compilation of these scores gives us a picture of how dependent or independent Grayson is. Tracked over time, you can actually measure progress.
Tonight Grayson chose not to help prepare dinner (and I'm sure that he received a low score on that ADL). He also had to be reminded several times after the RA prepared his meal, to eat his food. Repeating what I said yesterday, I'm afraid that his loss of taste and smell is affecting his appetite. We will continue to monitor it.
Pax!
Brant
Oh, if grading at the high school level, on less important tasks, could be as straightforward and baggage-free, simply used to track progress. Well, that's the theory, anyway...
ReplyDeleteI have different food-related sensory-loss issues; I don't get hungry so often any more, so I don't eat as often as I should (and I'm also down to my high-school weight). Once you get used to the new, different signals (that were there all along, but weren't as prominent as the "usual" ones), you can use them instead. When he's ready, he'll figure out what needs to be done.
If I didn't have my running "To Do" lists, I would never get anything done. Maybe this is a coping mechanism for my own injury, but I have been doing it my whole life and it feels normal. If I don't have a list, I don't know what to do with myself!
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