Books

As summer is coming to a quick close, I thought I'd take a moment to give an update on how the boys are doing.

I had, what I consider, a pretty great accomplishment yesterday with Reilly. I'm sure you have heard the saying, Read to your kids for at least 15 minutes a day. Well, I've tried this. With Braedon, it was easy. He liked to sit on my lap or sit beside me. He likes the closeness. We'd look at books and point out different things. Reilly has been very different.

He doesn't like physical contact. He doesn't like to be close to someone. He, especially, doesn't like structure or have the patience to look for different things on a book. Each time I've tried to "read" with him over the past 3 years, he takes the book and tosses it. He screams and fights if he has to sit beside me. It's basically been a non-starter. That was, until yesterday.

As usual, I turned on some quiet music, got out about 20 little books and spread them out on the floor of the front room. Braedon and I sat on the floor and began to look at the different books. To help Reilly enjoy books, I bought books he would be familiar with. He likes the movies Toy Story and Cars. He also likes Thomas the Train. I have books with all of those characters.

As we were sitting on the floor, Reilly walked in and sat down. He picked up a book and started to look through it. He doesn't have the best fine motor skills, so turning pages is a hard task for him. I slowly reached over and turned the page and acted all excited to see Lightening McQueen. He smiled and thought it was neat.

I turned another page and pointed at a race track with all the cars on it. I made car noises and moved my finger along the race track. Reilly just sat there. He'd never done this before. He then took his little finger and traced it along the race track and then looked at me and smiled.

Eureka!!!

We looked at one other book with Buzz and Woody, before he threw the book at my face and walked off. I can't begin to tell you how happy I was. We had an accomplishment. It didn't last long, but that isn't the point. The point is it happened. I'm hoping it will happen again today.

As for Braedon, I'm so impressed with his progress this summer. I stopped his ADHD medicine about a month ago, and it has been a blessing. He might still need to take some medicine when school starts up, we'll see. Not the Vyvanse he was on. It helped him focus, but his mood swings were off the charts. Hours and hours of panic attacks, screaming, crying, hitting... It simply turned him into another person.

I've really enjoyed communication with Braedon this past summer. He still doesn't talk in sentences and 3 word combinations aren't too common. His pronunciation of words is something we are always working on. What impresses me, is how well he can communicate his wants and needs to me. I can also ask him to do something and he understands me.

As usual, we are still working on the "I want" phrase. He still needs a verbal prompt most of the time, but I'm hearing him use it on his own more and more.