Picnic with the cousins and Potty Training has begun

This week was an OK week for Zach. He is sleeping through the night although he still goes to bed awfully late. He sleeps in late and one of the therapist calls him a teenager because of his sleeping habits. I feel lucky that he sleeps through the night - I just wish we could get him to go to bed on his own.

He met 3 targets this week, slower then the week of 12 targets, but better than 0 like last week. We believe that getting back on his supplement regiment and back in to a more routing schedule has helped.

Had Zach's meeting with the county to review his IFSP - Individualized Family Service Plane. I don't think we requested any changes although I think you know what happened to our respite.

We had a family picnic on Sunday while cousins from Massachusetts were visiting. Zach was shy and sat in my lap at first (make that the first hour and a half) but then he seemed to warm up - even singing several of the words to You are My Sunshine and letting my cousin Karen play with him and pick him up. It was really terrific.

We have begun potty training today. We are basically ambushing the little guy and he hasn't left the second story of our house all day. He also hasn't pooped all day which is extremely unlike him and has me very concerned. I don't think he is getting the potty training stuff yet and actually am pretty frazzled from sitting in the hallway upstairs most of the afternoon and evening. How come it sounded good in planning, but the execution is much harder?

How does a kids with ASD learn to go potty? They have very limited receptive and expressive language and limited imitation skills. It's all rewarding for when he gets it right. That wasn't too often today.

Tris stuff sort of wears me out. Thank God one of the therapists sent me the following message today:

Oh, I forgot to tell you, and maybe it will brighten your day...but Zach was singing a part of the Blues Clues song, and he kept pointing to his head and saying "think...think...thiiink"