Self-Feeding Progress

This past week, our son finally made a huge leap forward.  He has not even been feeding himself finger foods for nearly 2 years.  Suddenly, on Sunday, he gave it a go.  One Monday, I cut up his peanut butter & jelly sandwich so he could feed it to himself.  With only a little encouragement, he began feeding himself the sandwich.  Our daughter and I cheered him on after he finished his lunch.  That night, I make the kids one of their favorites pancakes for dinner.  It is a treat that we do once in a while.  For some reason, the kids love having “breakfast for dinner” once in a while.  After I cut up Pookie’s pancake, I put the fork in his hand.  Up until now, he has refused to even try holding a fork or spoon at mealtime.  This time, he was receptive.  I had to help him get a piece of pancake on the fork, but he was able to take over from there.  He fed himself with a fork for the first time!

The following morning, he had cereal for breakfast.  I had to use very little milk in his bowl.  The extra milk made it too difficult for him to scoop up the cereal in his spoon.  I had to aid him in scooping up the cereal, but like before, he was able to feed himself.

Over the last few days, he has been fluctuating between doing it on his own and at times, needing help.  Overall, he is feeding himself at each meal and snack.  It is such an exciting time for us!  I am SO proud of him.

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“Typical” Moment

Some days you simply have to enjoy the silliness.  When you have a special needs child, you always seem to be dealing with one issue or another.  Not necessarily the big stuff, but just the day to day things that crop up.  With autism, the biggest issue is always a sensory based one.  A child dealing with over-stimulation is very common.  There are also the times when your child, who loves a particular food, such as buttered toast, suddenly decides that they no longer like to eat anything that has a crunch.  Of course, they don’t give you a heads-up or memo.  You find out after you have prepared a breakfast of an open-faced egg sandwich.  Or maybe they suddenly decide that their favorite style of cup is now something they refuse to drink from.  This leads you to having to try out every style of cup in the kitchen until you find that one which they deem acceptable.   It never ends.

Well, the other day, our son had a very “typical” moment.  Not typical for an autistic, mind you.  I am talking about acting like a typical child.  It was SO refreshing that I nearly made the mistake of laughing and telling him “Good Job!”

We were having lunch and after he was done, our son started acting up at the dinner table.  He was fussing around and just basically being naughty.  I finally told him that he was excused from the table and to go lay down on his bed.  In our house, lunch is immediately followed by a 1-hr quiet time where the kids can watch a video on their tablet, play quietly on their beds, or take a nap.

Pookie got down from his chair, walked to the kitchen entry, then turned to face me.  he was not happy with me.  He gave me an angry look and stomped his foot in frustration.  Inside, I was ready to rival any church choir singing the “Hallelujah” chorus.  My son was acting like a typical child having a temper tantrum!!!  It was AWESOME!  I wanted to hug him and tell him how proud I was of his improvement in expressing his emotions.

On the outside, I had to walk over to him and gently but firmly let him know that stomping his foot at Momma was NOT allowed.  He is allowed to get angry, but not allowed to act out on it.  Then I led him to his bedroom for his quiet time.

Thankfully, I was around the corner where he could not see me when I started grinning like a Cheshire cat and doing a celebratory jig in the kitchen.  Which of course had Little Miss thinking that Momma was off her rocker.   LOL

 

 

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Another Round of Storms

We had a night filled with severe thunderstorms again. West of us, the storms brought some tornados as well. Though we have some flooding, we were lucky in that the only real damage was to our driveway’s bridge over the irrigation ditch. We lost about half of the bridge. That will be repaired today.

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