OUR MONTHLY TRIBUTE: austin abreu
A NOTE FROM HIS OT, NAZIFA MAHBUB OTR: Austin has made phenomenal progress in occupational therapy via tele-therapy practice.
Prior to tele-therapy, sitting at the table to engage in activities was a challenge.
He benefited from consistent heavy work exercises for self-regulation in order to transition to OT.
He now is easily ready and motivated to transition to therapy on screen.
He greets his therapist and requests for activities when provided with an opportunity to make a choice.
He has made significant improvements in his sustained attention to tabletop tasks and virtual screen activities.
He is now transitioning to non-preferred and new activities on a weekly basis.
He is able to read age-appropriate texts, copies sight words, and follows 2-step verbal directions in OT sessions.
Austin has also found a new love for exercising in OT and is very cooperative in a variety of motor tasks like yoga, animal walking, obstacle courses etc.
He has mastered most of his OT goals during this plan of care and is already working on his long-term goals.
A very special thank you to his phenomenal mom, who has always been consistent with his attendance in all of his therapies no matter what.
She has always shown her commitment to her son's success in his everyday routine. She has always been responsive to new therapy strategies to maximize his engagement and consistently provides Austin with the tools needed to participate in OT.
A NOTE FROM HIS SPEECH THERAPIST, TIFFANY ROBERTS, SLP-A: Austin has been attending therapy for two years now where he has made tremendous progress. Austin first started coming to speech therapy due to his lack of expressive language. He had difficulty requesting needs and wants. He was presenting with a lot of jargon and decreased ability to follow directions and making eye contact. Over the course of his time here at Bi-County, he has excelled in speech and occupational therapy. He continues to meet goals and surprise us all with the number of utterances he uses to communicate, even with all of the changes and adapting to teletherapy. Austin is currently able to use full sentences, answer hypothetical questions, follow 2+ directions and name items being described to him without visuals. Mom has noted that he is able to have a full conversation with his older sister at home and at times dominates the conversation. Austin truly has made tremendous progress over our short time working together and continues to surprise me every session with his advanced vocabulary and ability to read and spell words at such a young age. It's amazing to look back and see that he started with Bi county using only one word to communicate and now there is no holding him back!