The New Frontiers Program taught us how to assess our child and how to write goals to inspire his growth. We wrote goals for all the areas of development that we’re working on, and after two weeks I can see how powerful it is to have a direction and work towards it. I’ll mention only two goals here. One of the areas of development is communication. Ezra has basic speech now, but really struggles with answering basic, simple questions. So our goals is to help him answer and ask simple questions. Using his current motivation (planets, spelling names of family members) I created a quiz game for him that would ask an answer these simple questions. Every time he answered right I would cheer like crazy. He quickly caught on to it, and of course felt really good about himself because he knows all the answers. The progress he has made is evidence of how great the Son-Rise program model really works. He barely answered any questions two weeks ago, and in our latest session I had him answer simple questions for 25 minutes. That is amazing. He even tried to formulate his own questions, although I can tell that that will take a bit longer.
The other goal is in the area of interactive attention span. We had a goal to help him play simple games with peer and increase his interactive attention span to 10 minutes. We totally blew that one out of the water today. Two weeks ago, I showed him how to play a goose game where we have to take turns, roll the dice, count the steps, and then wait while the other person takes a turn. That is shockingly difficult for him, because he keeps on putting the dice and the little avatars in his mouth. He also doesn’t really get the counting the spaces part yet, but I was only focusing on getting him to take turns and wait. At first all we managed was about 4 minutes. Today I played a card game with him, where he took turns picking up and laying cards with me for 40 minutes! All it took was focus and two weeks. I’m so excited for the possibilities of this program.