Thursday, August 16, 2007

a busy time

these past few days have been quite busy, just the typical weekday schedule, i guess, but i'll try to touch on a few things we've done RDI-related. Tuesday was rough, because when i went to pick up the kids at the sitter's, she told me that Henry cried for an hour when he got off the bus and she couldn't figure out why. He also won't eat any food at her house but apple sauce for the past three days. so....who knows? i have no idea why he is doing this, and of course he can't tell me. so, for now i ignore it. what else can i do...the kid won't starve. that night, Rose was in rare form and basically took all my attention, so my only "activity" was objective four...sitting with henry doing nothing. i think at some point we both fell asleep.

yesterday, we had dinner at my mom's, so that was something a little off schedule. Henry adapted to the change very well, and we did a bit of "walking activity" as we walked to her house. One thing i've been trying to do a lot lately is give indirect prompts. he probably gets them about 20% of the time, which is frustrating, probably for both of us. i try to scaffold them by long pauses and then giving him the direct prompt after a few tries. i really don't think he is "thinking" about what i'm saying most of the time. maybe that's my fault for using too much talking a lot of the time. but i try to incorporate them into for instance the walking activity...when i say "boy, you're walking too fast for me."...Henry, we can't walk that quick...finally, Henry, wait for us.

tonight, our planned activity was making brownies again...this time for his last day of school to give to the teachers. i taped it, and he did pretty well. we had a lot of emotion-sharing and he seemed really into it - knew just what to do - and even stayed with me all the way through his role in part of the "clean-up". he even grabbed the spoon to stir without my prompt! we stirred together for a bit too. we had a few unexpected challenges, like when he accidentally dropped the small bowl into the big one on one of the dumps. I tried very hard to make sure he didn't feel like this was a "mistake" and then want to withdraw from the activity, so i just laughed and said "boy, that was sure heavy." he picked it up and out and we continued on - i felt like it was a good example of some serious "productive uncertainty" that he was able to weather. we'll see how it looks on video, but i was impressed and i think it helped his confidence.

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