Off To A Good Start

Andy's team of line therapists have started their training with him. They worked with him for 2 hours today and handled it very well. There was a meltdown when I brought out the vacuum cleaner. He ran upstairs to his room and was crying for a good 10 minutes. I printed out the picture of the vacuum I posted on here. At first he kept throwing it and turning it over, eventually he started looking but was never interested. The senior therapist suggested finding videos on YouTube with vacuum cleaners. I was able to find a few with young kids using vacuum cleaners, some of these kids really love these machines and even collect them! Here is a great one. Andy usually loves YouTube but he would look only briefly at the vacuums. He didn't melt down, but he did try to avoid them. So that's the plan of attack for this. This was also the last of the tears.

We are starting to introduce him to a sippy cup and get him to hold and put a toothbrush in his mouth on his own. Was he thrilled about this, nope. He runs away from the sippy cup. It took forever to get him to take the tooth brush. The following pictures will tell the story.


Holding it empty.


Ready to go with all your equipment Andy?


Took some convincing to get that toothbrush anywhere near his mouth.


Holding it with milk and laughing!!!


Score!!! Why can't I get you to do that???

He would run away from the cup, put it down a second after he took it in his hand, he would push away. There were no tears or tantrums. He didn't even get upset, just shown he didn't want it in his way. But he did hold it. It was never more than for about 30 seconds, but we will take it. He has NEVER taken a tooth brush and put it in his mouth by himself for me. My daily attempt to clean his teeth is not something anyone looks forward to. What's up with that Andy? We have the evidence now, so no excuses. When he asks for food he is saying "eat" very clearly without prompting. He said "up" to go upstairs. Eric's favorite word also came out of his little mouth, "tickle".

This is going much better than I expected it to. They have not gone hard core yet, but they are getting down to business. There are solid plans in place for him from the get go. Compared to how it was when Eric first started, it's very impressive. Andy has been exposed to Eric's therapy for over a year so that may be why he's been so cooperative? I'm sure he'll have his moments. This is great to see. The schedule, well it's going to be quite busy once both boys are at full hours. Since this is a home based program, that's where we are going to be, a lot. I also have to work with the boys on everything the therapists are doing. This is a big time commitment. There is only one of me. Once the summer comes we should have weekends off and in the fall all 3 boys will be in school. So it's going to be a few months we are going to have to hold on and do the best we can. It's all worth it in the end.