I talked with Megan and these are the things she recommends us to do in the next two weeks, when we will have our group meeting.
1) I told her we were having some issues with Tony leaving the room, or just coming to peak and then leaving, or him going to play by himself in the corner. She said we should explain to Tony that his schedule time to play is an hour. Tony does not get to peak and leave. If he enters the room, he needs to stay for his hour. After the hour he can leave or, if he is having fun, he can stay. But the minimum is an hour if he decides to enter the room. After the hour, if he wants to leave, he can say to Duchis: "Thank you for playing, I had great time" (or something like that) and he can leave. Once he leaves, we need to make a big deal to Duchis that "IT IS GIRL TIME! BRAVO!" so that she does not feel that she is stuck in the room and Tony gets to leave and do whatever he wants. Show her that it is great that Tony played, but that it is also great to have GIRL TIME. Make girl time special.
2) About those moments when Tony goes to play by himself, Megan wants us to look for the PRECURSOR for these moments. What happens right before he leaves to the corner? Is it about Duchis not wanting to play what he wants to play? Is it about playing girl stuff? Is it about a specific type of game that he does not like? Check for patters, try to discover the type of situation when he leaves. Also, Megan said we need to do different things when Tony OR Duch leave our game. If Tony leaves, you can be directive and tell him "Get over here!" "You can do that later, come play with us!" You can even pull his legs back to the game in a playful game. With Duch, we need her to come spontaneously, so we cannot be so directive. With her is more about being super fun when playing with Tony so that she comes voluntarily. So, feel free to be directive with Tony when he goes away and tell him he can always play by himself later, but that this is special time to play together.
3) I told Megan about those situations when Tony takes something away from Duchis and she leaves, or situations when he comes to join her play and she leaves, or situations when Duchis takes things away from Liam or Tony. I mentioned that in all these transactions usually nobody says anything to anybody, all are silent transactions. Here are the recommendations:
- If Tony comes to sit with Duch (without taking something away) and Duch leaves, then we can tell Duch "Duch, you don't have to walk away. You can stay. Tony wants to play together. It is fun, come back." The idea here is to tell Duch that Tony is not wanting to take anything away from her, but that he is just joining her in the play in order to play together.
- If Tony comes and takes something away from Duchis' hands (or Liam's), we can tell Tony: "Hold on, you cannot take things from people's hands. You can ask her if you want to see that and wait to see what she says" Then, tell Tony to think about his classmates in school, how he does not like if his friends come and take things from his hands. Or, what would happen if somebody would come and take his books or legos from his hands. In this case, you could tell Duch to tell Tony: "Hey, wait a second! I was looking at that" or "hey, I want that back". Same thing is Duch or Tony take something away from Liam. Explain to Duch/Tony how to ask Liam to show something and explain to Liam how he can protest and tell them he wants it back.
- If Liam is the one taking things away from Tony or Duch, the situation is different. We want Liam to be more assertive. So, if Liam takes things away, explain to the other kid that Liam just wants to see it for a little bit. Again, if somebody takes something away from Liam, help Liam to tell that person "I want the book back", etc, etc.
4) I told Megan of all the situations in which Duchis wants to do whatever she wants and I end up telling her "NO" so many times a day (like putting the water super hot in the bath tub, or rolling all the paper towels, or putting paper in her mouth, etc). Megan says that it is Ok to tell her all these "NO"s because we are outside of the playroom and she needs to understand boundaries. In the playroom, Megan says that Duchis definitely needs to learn that we cannot leave the room to get her brown ham, or cookies, or toys. She says that a great skill that kids need to learn is "it is fun to wait for what I want". So, we can always tell her that she will have brown ham for lunch for dinner once she asks mommy/daddy if she can have some, but that during our play sessions there is no running downstairs for brown ham or cookies.
5) We talked about those situations when Duchis wants control and does not want to play our games. Megan said we can literally sit with our back to her and play by ourselves in a super fun way (not loud necessarily, but fun). Duchis is so curious that many times she will come and see what we are doing. But putting our back to her send the message that "I am taking all pressure off you. I will play by myself ad I will not insist anymore in you playing with me until you come by yourself." You can sit in a way that you could see her through the mirror, or sit a bit on the side, but Megan said that sitting with the back to her is good, too, in these cases.
FOR LIAM
Most of my conversation with Megan was a about Duchis this time, but I do have tips for Liam for the next two weeks:
1) Megan was excited to hear that Liam was playing more and more games, was talking more, and was not spending so much time reading books :) She recommended that we keep trying all the games that have not worked in the past and all the games we have played with Duch, too. Use more puppets, more stuff animals in your games, the ways we have done it with Duch. He loves videos of animals; use his plastic animals and plastic dinosaurs for stories. He is really into numbers, use all we have to create games related to numbers. He is into the solar system; use the plastic rocket to have adventures. His birthday is in 5 months, let's see if this year he gets into birtdays! :) Play more birthday themes :) Bring the dress up from Duchis' closet and combine dress up with puppets and pillow pets. Really, think of all games you have played with Duch and tried with Liam in the past, and tried them again. He is liking them this time! Also, we still have a few Little People sets: farm, ABC zoo, airport, and fire trucks. Check those out, too. Let me know if you need help finding them. Some of them are in the garage.
2) Cara, his former OT at NTS sent me this two ideas after she read the blog:
***"On the emotions thing for Liam, DLTK.com has several coloring sheets with blank faces. I've printed those at work and laminated them to let the kids draw appropriate emotions. You can also cut out eyes to make them like masks.
***I play a motor planning and attention game called the "star game" to work on multi step directions. I put a bunch of colored rubber stars on the ground in a big circle and give sets of two step motor commands ("run to the blue star" or "hop to blue and crab walk to green." The kids really enjoy it. When they understand the game I start taking turns with them giving and receiving directions. Some of my kiddos need large pics of the various animal walks to help formulate the directions. I have used any variety of place markers instead of stars (letters, numbers, pictures of family), you could also use emotion faces to work that in too."
This second idea sounds like Hallooballoo (not sure how to write it) but without the electronics. You could use those color circles that come in that exercise box, or the laminated vehicles, or the laminated instruments, or the animal pawprints, or our pictures, etc, etc.
3) Speaking about commands, Jenny (his NTS speech therapist) sent me a list of command she is giving him. He is NOT really following many of them, so try these out:
- Pick up the car and put it in the box
- Pick up the book and put it on top of the box
- Pick up the lam and put it under the box
- Pick up the book and put it under the box
- Pick up the crayons and put them under the box
- Pick up the crayons and put them on top of the box
- Pick up the duck and put it in the box
- Pick up the rattle and put it on top of the box
- Pick up the duck and put it under the box
- Pick up the car and put it on top of the chair Think of games where he would be motivated to practice these types of commands.
4) Jenny is also asking Liam "what" questions, like "what are you eating?" "what do you have there?" while playing and he is not really answering many of them, so incorporate these questions in your plan WHEN HE IS MOTIVATED by the game because then he will be more likely to answer. He is answeringJenny's yes/no questions and her multiple choice questions, which is great!
Finally, here is a picture of Liam on his bed with the space blankes. I am fascinated by the fact that I can now take pictures of Liam!!!! WOW! This is the same boy who hated pictures becuase of his sensitivity to light!!! And, today we went to the Natural Science Museum and the Planetarium (since it was pooring in the Zoo) and Liam had a great time!!!! It was his first time in thePlanetarium!!! He even told me "give me space" when I was trying to show him some energy exhibits :)
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