We knew it wouldn't be easy

Today was challenging. We met with our team this morning to talk about the parent involvement portion of this therapy, which is HUGE. We have 2 weekly meetings plus 2 hours of parent training EVERY week. It's a lot... and I don't have a full-time job on top of it.

After the meeting, I took my big boy to his first day of his Friday Morning out program. He did this last year so it wasn't much of a big deal but it still is weird to me to drop him off somewhere. It's not weird to him - quick hug and he is more than ready for me to leave. But it reminds me how quickly he is growing up.

After the drop-off, I rushed home to do a videotaped assessment with B. We had to do three 10-minute segments of play. The first one was B playing independently, the next was the 2 of us playing in the way he directed and the third was me directing him to play. It started out okay for about 1.5 minutes and THEN... he decided he'd rather go upstairs. And he just could not understand why I wouldn't go with him. He cried like I have never seen him cry before. He even tensed up and kind of threw himself down - a behavior I have never seen from him. It was awful. Ten minutes felt like an eternity. I was able to engage him in the toys for a minute or two but then he'd just get even more upset. We have some nice footage of him crying... in no way indicative of the way he plays. In short, it sucked but we got through it and he was rewarded with his coveted Thomas videos.

And on the subject of trains, here's a doozie. Our team wants to try limiting his access to  his prized possessions. Trains are his world and it's pretty clear that they are distracting him from being able to learn. They want to test using them as reinforcers meaning that he gets to play with them as a reward for a specific skill or behavior and not just play with them whenever he wants.  On Sunday night, we will hide his enormous bin of trains and see how it goes.  Here's hoping he's "motivated - not miserable" as our therapists are aiming for. We have a pretty intensive week of therapy so at least we won't be alone in our efforts. Poor B. It just isn't fair that he has to work so much harder for the things we take for granted.