12/2/09

Hope everyone had a great thanksgiving, ours was fantastic. Ty was a trooper! On Thursday we celebrated just the four of us which was really nice. On Friday, we hosted a Thanksgiving for Steve's dad's side of the family. As i had said before, it was the first family function we had hosted since the boys first birthday party. Tyler would just get overwhelmed with more than a few peope in the house and we'd spend our time helping him get through it and not being able to be hosts so it wasn't worth it. His tolerance has increased and his frustration levels have decreased so we decided to try and see how it goes. I had Steve drop run an errand with the boys a little before we expected everyone so I could do a final clean up around the house. This was probably a mistake in judgement on my part since Steve returned home at about the same time the guests were arriving. Also, Steve was blocked out of the driveway so the boys had to enter through the front door instead of the garage door. Tyler is used to entering through he garage door, so this alone can cause him to be confused and get upset. In fact, if we ever miss a turn or something and have to turn around or forget something at daycare and have to go back, he gets really upset, not understanding why we are doing things differently. So many notes to self in this blog (practice going through front door, go different routes, etc.).. see there's so much to remember in the life of autism and how to "fix" behavioral issues. OK anyway, back to our thanksgiving celebration...

Tyler had to enter through the front door and he was whimpering a little when he walked in. I took his coat off and his shoes and got him settled and went about greeting people, etc. I was in the kitchen soon after doing something and he came in and was on the verge of tears and you could tell he was just looking for me to help him make sense of all of it and was getting more and more worked up not finding me since we had a house full of people. I took him upstairs to get him out of hte commotion and get him settled. While we were preparing dinner, grandpa went upstairs to hang out with Tyler and make sure he was ok. Shortly before dinner, Tyler came back downstairs and was fine, in fact he was fine from that point forward. He did phenomenal. We had my sister in law and her husband and my nieces stay the night and he did great with all that. They were all there in the morning and he did great with all that. He used to not even be able to eat with anyone new near him let alone a big group of people. He'd bang his head when it got too overwhelmed and if all else failed, he'd retreat into his own little world, block out the rest of us and never even look our way or respond to noise, etc. He was so interactive and happy and engaged, it was just awesome. And of course Ben was on cloud 9 with all the people to give him attention and play with him. We really need to adopt an older child to play with Ben:) Hopefully one day though. In fact ont he way to school/daycare Ben and I were pretend sneezing, a little game we play. Tyler was smiling at us so I said, ok it's Tyler's turn. He opened his mouth repeatedly but nothing came up. Ben goes, he can't talk! I said he's trying to talk and one day he will be able to, won't that be cool. Ben goes, yep, and then he can see "hey ben, let's play GI Joe's".. lololol..oh how I hope that happens! ANyway there was one other time Ben yelled at my cause Tyler didn't talk. Oh they were in the bathtub and tyler wanted me to throw his foam letters into the tub and I was asking him the color of oen of the letters. Ben, in a very annoyed voice, says, "HE CAN"T TALK!".. I said yes he can, he can talk with his hands and he knows how to sign "green".

The rest of the weekend was just as spectacular, wish I wouldn't have waited so long to write in the blog because I know I'm forgetting some things. We took the boys to Urban Toddler (play location nearby) and they have a bunch of play areas/rooms set up. We were playing in the kitchen. Ben was playing with the babies and so I was too, Tyler wanted to spin the dishes of course, his fav stim. So I started getting Tyler to play with us in imaginary play. I was surprised as to how quickly he was into playing with us. I asked him to give the baby a bottle and he did. I pretend drank from a Little tea cup and so did he, I feed the baby with a spoon and asked him too and he did. See he used to do this but only with a very highly reinforcing reward for doing so and also through gritted teeth and tension, hew as very relaxed and happy to do it this time. It was just one of those moments when I realized how far we've come since the beginning of that study about 2 years ago.

Tyler had to miss two music sessions due to illness so we are getting to do a one on one session with one of the music therapists next week, looking forward to that. So we can talk to her about Ty's interests in the keyboard and how we can embrace this and keep him engaged with us through music.