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!

RCR

I sort of had a light bulb go off the other day when I was giving Henry his daily 'before bed bowl of cereal'. Just as we use an intermediate bowl to allow Henry to make many small dumps when adding ingredients to the mixing bowl, I've begun to do the same thing with his cereal and milk. The first time I did it, he caught on right away. Unlike baking, which we're only able to do once or twice a week, the kid eats several bowl of cereal a day so this should introduce many more occasions for RCR.

Since we have millions of acorns on our property at the moment, I'm going to try to incorporate them in an RCR activity tomorrow. I'll probably just hand him acorns and have him throw them somewhere... we'll see.

Video Review #5

Mom - Non-Verbal
Mom and Henry continue to target Objective 5 use of non-verbals in a few different activities.



Mom - Give/Put
Various RCR activities with Mom and Henry in giver-puter roles.



Dad - Non-Verbal
Like I mentioned in the video, I'm not sure this was a good activity to target objective 5 after all because he's done this so many times and he knows his role pretty well. I just gotta get him to stop tasting the batter!



Dad - Give/Put
In these videos, I'm thought I was doing RCR until I started editing the video and remembered that I'm not supposed to talk for that - but still think this was a productive activity regardless. Another thing I observed was that even though I did all these videos last night in a span of about an hour and a half, I don't think it seemed forced to him. To me, it was a little rushed but the point I'm trying to make is that he seemed to go along with everything without a fight so I guess he was enjoying himself somewhat.

The weekend and finding fun games

Well, this weekend without the books went really well - despite the added craziness of having houseguests, we were able to do lot of things with Henry. Saturday, we did a lot of time in the yard, playing with balls and on the swing and on the bike. no pressure - we just had fun with it b/c aaron's family was visiting and it was relaxed (no videos to do :). Sunday, Aaron headed up to the dover race with the fam, so i had the kids to myself all day. It went very well. I filmed a few things, which you will see on tues, but mostly it was just Hen, Rose and i hangin out. I got some alone time w/Henry when i took him to gymnastics class - lots of good opportunity for RDI throughout the class....especially use of non-verbals for transitions - like holding my hand out, or using eye gaze on where he should go and what to do next. and he paid attention pretty well.

We also went to the store after the class and he picked out a b-day cake for Poppy (his great grandpa). we went back to my mom's and had an early dinner and the cake for Pop - Hen helped put in the candles and then blow them out - he was a role-player in the whole process, which was great and really made him feel good about himself - he was just extra smiley today and in tune. I think he liked having that alone time with mom - i need to try to schedule that in on a weekly basis if i can - aaron has mentioned he could come home early one night a week - that might work well.

Proximity, patience, and limiting words was my mantra for this weekend and i think it worked well - hen seemed on a much more even keel. i watched the video you sent - actually i had already seen it from the site, but i think it was a great example of setting a welcoming environment - i'm going to have aaron watch it tomorrow.

Oh, so my three activities that i think Henry would enjoy are playing on the musical instruments, anything to do with the swingset and yard (maybe even a Dora the Explorer type scavenger hunt, we were having fun with things like that this weekend.) and building with this magnetic ball erector set. i think as time goes on i'll have more - eliminating the books (or at least limiting the time with them to about 15 min a day, as well as 15 min of computer) has opened up a lot of new options.

Lots of Interaction tonight

wow...maybe putting away the books was good idea. Henry did really well tonight with no distractions. He actually stayed in the room for a long time with Rosie and me - we sang lots of songs, played musical instruments, played a bit with the plastic food. He didn't do any puzzles. I did give him about 15 minutes of computer time while i made dinner, but otherwise he was very much around. I think this is going to really help us find those "play" type of things we are looking for to incorporate into RDI activities. I'll keep you posted how it goes for the rest of the week.

We put the books away

One of Henry's worst obsessions are his books. When he's in his books, it's difficult to pull him away and it's even more difficult to experience share - so we put them away. He has a couple reserved for bedtime but other than that, he's finding other things to get into. One thing he's picked up again are puzzles. Puzzles were an obsession a year or so ago but has since waned. What I'm finding with the puzzles is that I can give him 1 or 2 pieces at a time (giver-putter exercise) and he lets me help him put the puzzle together (experience sharing). We'll see how long this last but we're happy to see something positive come out of this so soon.

Videos for Phone Consult

Aaron RCR



Theresa Objective 6



Theresa Objective 5