Gavin's 1st day of School

Gavin's first day of school was yesterday. You may remember that I was sure that I was going to cry.....but, there were NO TEARS! Of course, I stayed with him most of the time, so this might account for why I didn't cry. I stayed in his class because I wanted to see his reaction to being there and also to make sure that he was coping well with this new situation. He did well, for the most part.

Here he is on his way to school.



Here he is snuggling with his teacher.



He began his time there happy, but after one of his classmates started to cry, Gavin decided to cry with him! (He does this sometimes when someone else is crying. He's either very sensitive or he must think that's what he should be doing as well?!) He continued to cry for awhile, especially since the O.T. put him in a chair after that episode, and the chair made him work harder than he is used to working with his head and neck control, so he decided to cry and voice his opinion about this too. After crying, he decided to just check-out from his surroundings and he took about a 10 minute break and fell asleep. We woke him up and he was happier after his snooze. He was quite jumpy most of the time that he was at school though. He startles easily by noises, and he does this especially when he is in a new surrounding.

Next, he worked on visual light tracking and button pushing with his teacher.



His teacher said that since his blindness comes from having had a stroke, there are things that they can do to work on helping him learn to see better. His blindness is not a problem with his eyesight, the problem comes from his brain, which isn't telling his eyes what they are seeing. So, she plans on working on this with him. She said this makes her very excited, because it's such an accomplishment to see progress in this area. She had a student before that ended up seeing with the aid of glasses after 3 years of this training. Right now, Gavin is quite blind, even with the aid of his glasses, which is why I don't make him wear them. He hates having them on his face and he continually pulls them off, so since they really aren't helping him anyway, I feel it's not worth his discomfort.

Next, he watched a video that was of shapes bouncing around. The shapes were all red, black and white and the screen was really lit up, so he could focus on it since he always looks towards light.



Here he is just chillin' for a while.



And, here he is watching a light box.



Finally, here he is on the way home.



His afternoon at school really wore him out! He fell asleep within minutes of getting into the car to go home. He was also very sleepy most of lastnight. I guess he's not used to all this work and excitement!

All in all I think the day went well. I know that this will be good for him and I'm sure that he will get used going to school, the more that he is there. I plan on staying with him off and on for the next week or so, just to make sure that he does well with all of this. I'm hopeful that he will do fine and I think that EVEN I will eventually be fine with Gavin in school as well.


"I have set the Lord always before me; because He is at my right hand I shall not be moved. Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoices; my flesh also will rest in hope." Psalm 16:8-9