7/3/08 - Have a great 4th of July

Tyler is still acting abnormal today. He's more resistant and aggressive than normal. He's been the same way at daycare. I had a hard time getting him to carry his plate to the table last night. Tyler has a tendancy to bend at the knees and drop to the ground when he doesn't want to move in the directino you want him too. It's especially tricky when you are trying to get him to carry his dinner plate. After about a 2 minute struggle, we made our way successfully to the table. Then we had a similar situation at bathtime when we had another emergency pooper where I had to quickly remove Tyler from the tub and he was not so happy about that. You'd be amazed at how strong a 25 lb little boy can be! I needed to lay him down so I could dry him or at least his feet so he wouldn't slip on teh ground but he did not want to lay down adn resisted quite heavily. I was also trying to make sure I was in a position to protect his head if he got mad enoguh to start banging it backwards against the ground. Since I only had 2 hands and needed about 4, I used my body core to help hold him down long enough to wrap a towel around him so I could pick him back up and he was fine after that. The key on all of these issues is to follow through with the demand you are placing on Tyler.

We had a community visit at daycare today and worked a lot on peer interaction. Again, Tyler isn't quite himself, very overregulated and aggressive so ti was tough to engage him for a long time but overall it went well. he did struggle with diaper change which he hasn't done in a long time so it was another sign to all of us that he's just having a rough couple of days. We worked on parachute, ring aruond the rosie and parallel play.

I talked a couple of days ago about Tyler's wandering and how it makes it difficult ot go anywhere. To put it in perspective, we have to put Tyler into his car seat first and take him out first because he'll take off. In fact, the other day when I dropped the boys at daycare, I had to get T yler out first because Ben didnt' have shoes on and I was going to carry Ben. I took maybe 8 seconds to get Ben out of his car seat and when I turned around i couldn't find Tyler anywhere, he just doesn't stay in the same spot. I witnessed something at daycare the other day that made me sad. The kids were outside playing baseball when Tyler and I arrived. As I was getting into my car I could hear the daycare provider saying ok, it's Ben's turn and as I was pulling away I saw her go up to help Ben hit the ball and then she had to stop and run after Tyler because he wanders away. He will wander anywhere without the normal fears/concerns kids have at that age about being away from familiar settings. So it made me sad because I know that the fun that the other kids were having was going to have to stop because Tyler was there and she'd have to concentrate on chasing Tyler. All of this is the reason we are really going to be targeting to get him to be able to be outside and learn to play in one area for a more extended period of time.

We are also going to continue to work on peer interaction and in order for it to be positive we have to find fun things that tyler can do or has for his peers and vice versa so that they want to interact with eachother. For example, Ty ler really really likes people to label numbers, letters, colors, and animals for him. So if he points to the number 5, he watns you to say 5. I'm going to start working with Ben and Tyler on this. Ben knows his colors, shapes, and animals so I think this would be a great way for Tyler to get some positive interaction with Ben. I'm still working on ways that Ben can see that Tyler is fun and has fun things to offer.