Wednesday, October 10, 2007

RCR Struggles and interesting thoughts from the webinar

i've been meaning to write all weekend, and now it's wed night and i'm finally getting around to it...aggh, life gets so busy.

I've been working various RCR activities with Henry all weekend and this week. We averaged about 10 a day over the weekend, but probably just two or three per day during the week. they ranged from anything from throwing acorns together to putting the dog treats in the container together. I tried to do the non-verbal inviting thing with many of them to get started, but that didn't really work - henry mostly ignored me until i asked him to come participate.

he would try to participate and he especially likes it when i add in funny sound effects, like a big karate chop "high-ya" and then we throw something somewhere together. however, we're not really getting a rhythm with this at all. he doesn't seem to be able to self regulate so we throw at the same time, and i can't do all the repair work for him. oftentimes i have to revert back to a 1-2-3-throw a few times before he starts to get it, or i do hand over hand a few times. but most of our activities do not last longer than 3-5 minutes, so it seems like he's never really "getting" it. i will keep on plugging away though. any advice?

also, attended the parent webinar last night and Gutstein, as always, had some good advice and stuff to work on. Basically the majority of the hour talked about transfer of responsibility - one of the things i found interesting was Gutstein telling parents to be sure not to allow the kid to take a passive role in the activity (a good example he gave was carrying a bag together, where when the kid lets go, you pick up the slack instead of letting if fall. i do that for sure!) so i'm trying to be mindful of when i might be "scaffolding" too much and allowing henry to take a passive role in our interactions, whatever they may be.

Gutstein also talked about having a short, 1-3 word thought to describe the objective that you are working on and carrying it with you throughout the day, being mindful of incorporating it if you can into every interaction with your kid til it becomes second-nature. My thought for now is "don't talk-use non-verbal"

also, another little anecdote and then i'll wrap up here. henry has discovered where the books are locked up in the "activity room". yesterday he indicated that he wanted to "jump on the bed", which i was psyched about b/c that was an activity that we had done together the previous day with Rosie and had a really good time playing and laughing together. of course, i said, lets go upstairs and jump and he said "no, here"...he wanted to enter the activity room. so i suspected something was up, when i let him in he went straight for the books. then he says "i love books". i said "henry, you told mommy you wanted to jump on the bed" and he attempted one pathetic jump to try to please me and then stared over at the books. i went ahead and let him have his fix, the poor kid. Never let them tell you that an autistic kid can't manipulate or won't lie - he played that one just right!

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