Steve had Friday off from work, and we totally forgot that we had rescheduled the team meetings to Friday afternoons from Wednesday nights. We had gone out for a run in the morning together and alone for the first time in a while - it was really nice. We ran over to my mother's home (around 2.4 miles), gave her the news about the layoff, assured her that the sky was not falling and talked politics for a bit, and then ran back home.
When we arrived, our driveway was filled with vehicles. The SLP came up and asked us if we were still having the team meeting - oops! Forgot. Sure we'll have it after your session. Steve made a quick call in for pizza (we try and have food at the meetings) and an hour later the 7 of us sat down and talked.
First order of business is Potty Time 2009. This one time only event will begin July 20 and finish not too long after if my wishes are to come true. I feel so lucky that I will be getting help potty training Zach. We are basically gonna ambush the little guy and be all about the potty until he gets it. I am so excited and curious how this is going to work. However, our lead therapist has assured me it can, and will, be done. Most training books emphasize the need for the kids to be pretty verbal to do this. It will be something to witness for sure.We sure could use the extra $ - diapers are very expensive!
The other order of business was the number of targets in Zach's program that he "mastered" this past week. Our lead therapist rattled them off - Zach completed 11 targets this past week!
If you are wondering what a target is - I'll try and give you an idea: one of Zach's targets was to match a picture of a ball to another picture of a ball. The trick is that neither of the balls were the same type of ball. Zach was given a picture of a ball(say a tennis ball)l, then 3 or 4 pictures of other objects were placed before him (basketball, dog, shoe, cat) and Zach was asked to match the ball to the other ball. This is abstracting the notion of ball since he isn't matching the same exact pictures- and he did it just great. This was so exciting.
We are trying not to live in fear anymore - we are going out with Zach in public, and reprimanding him for meltdown like behavior. For awhile, we were hesitatnt to attempt such things. It's hard because so many places offer food that he cannot have, and we have to deny both kids this part of the pleasure. We don't know if there will be some trigger to his tantrums that we cannot anticipate. And then I know that the general public will likely look at us like we are bad parents if he does throw a fit. I realized this was just promoting the behavior we didn't want. Last week we went canoeing and this week was miniature golfing. Steve and I decided that Sophie is sometimes more of a handful than Zach on these outings! I hope doing these things promotes our family unity and lets Zach know we have high expectations for him.
Upon leaving SRC, I notified a bunch of the people that meant a lot to me. The one mother that I recently blogged about sent me a note back thast I have to share with others - it sent shivers down my arms, and tears to my eyes.
My daughter had her moving up ceremony this morning (moving into middle school). She received an award for best sportsmanship but it was the certificate she earned reading 25 books this year that she was most proud of. She told me she didn’t know if she could do it. The kid who barely said 3 word sentences when entering kindergarten, read 25 books this year. Success is in every child’s reach.I really appreciated hearing that. I am tearing again as I read it. I love to see these children succeed. These triumphs mean so much more when you know what it took to accomplish them.
Happy 4th to everyone. God bless our great country.
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