"But Blakey has some sour cream"

Isaac is growing each day, but his stimming continues to be a worry and many times over-powers his ability to learn.

Today, Isaac was sitting at the table with the other kids as we enjoyed a family dinner. He LOVES sour cream and always asks for it (and often times will eat it by itself). He had the understanding that everyone had to have at least 3 bites of their enchalada, and THEN sour cream. For some reason, he thought Blake was getting sour cream without having to eat any of his enchilada. He cried out "But Blakey gets sour cream". It was so funny. Why is that important? I think it's something we haven't seen before: comparison to others. It is showing the ability to look at his surroundings and draw comparisons between himself and others.

Just as he's growing that way, he is also extremely distracted by flickering lights (that noone else would see), dish washers, clothes washers, showers running, etc. His therapist said today it's dishwashers, tomorrow it will be something else. Their approach is to redirect him from the distraction of the day.

Great progress, but still stimming

I haven't written in the journal in a long time. Isaac has been assigned ABA, ST, and OT for quite a long time now. ABA is only within the last 6 months, but the other two have been ongoing since we arrived in CO - for the last 2 1/2 years. He is making tremendous progress in eye contact, asking questions, etc. One area he is really struggling in, however, is stimming. He is able to learn very well, but when he is stimulated (by a sound, a texture or something else), all learning takes a back seat to his need for stimming.

He is learning many phrases and creating his own language around these phrases. The other day I was asking him to feed Max, our dog, a bone while on a walk. He kept telling me "Max is not hungry" and "He doesn't want a bone". Then, at some point, he said "OK, I know Max is hungry, but I don't want to give him this bone. It was cool to see him reasoning within himself and explaining the "why" behind his decision.

My goal for this week is helping him stim only when appropriate.

trip to the northwest and more...

We went to Oregon, Washington, and Canada (BC) on Jan 22. It was great, and I think Isaac enjoyed it as well. He seems to love water; it does something for him and he's always seeking it. Needless to say, being by the ocean/sound was great for him.

One activity, in particular, that was good for Isaac was walking up some stairs at the Children's museum in Seattle. For his development milestones between 12-24 months, he is suppose to be walking up stairs one foot - one stair, alternating. Up to this point, I've never seen him accomplish this; he always felt the need to put both feet on each stair. Well, this time, he was able to alternate, and he did it out of the blue. Since returning home, he's been able to do that foot-alternating walking on our stores, which is very exciting. So, he's behind, but he seems to be consistently about 1 year behind. He can accomplish these milestone, just a year behind the target.

Also, lately, he's been able to urinate in the toilet. In fact, the last 4 days, at some point during the day he's been able to go potty. He even asked to go potty a couple of days just before bed time, and was successful doing so!

We've been trying to teach him the importance of going pooh-pooh in the toilet (and not in the diaper) to avoid bad sores. Last night, for the first time ever, he did a small pooh-pooh. We're going to start rewarding him with cookies.

Something we're working on: reducing his violence when he can't cope. Today we learned about how to hold him after a violent incident, not as a restraint but as a way of compression. The OT simply held him tight and reiterated that he wasn't allowed to hit and that he needed to say "sorry".

"like Bakey and Naten"

We've been working with Isaac for quite some time to go potty. He has probably gone 3 or 4 times, but mostly they've been after swimming and he's struggled to find a consistent pattern. Even so, we still ask him all the time, especially as we're changing his diaper.

Just the other day, I asked him again. He was willing to go to the toilet and I thought we would begin the normal routine of me helping him to sit on the toilet. That night, however, he sternly told me that he didn't want to sit down, but that he wanted to go potty "like bakey and naten". He watched his brothers urinate standing up and wanted to do it just like them. It was so cute! He really seems to be more aware of his surroundings -this is just one example.

In the middle

Isaac has a "mickey mouse" puzzle. He can put the puzzles (mickey, donald, pluto) together and has now learned that their eyes are actually little circles, that their heads are big circles, and that we have circles (eyes/heads) on our bodies as well.

In addition, Isaac has learned what "middle" means. He can consistently/reliably put one of the puzzles (whichever one he/I wants) in the middle, moving it from the "outside". It is another exciting concept he's learned.


Working with him to not scream whenever he doesn't get his way. He seems to know how to get a reaction out of us on this.

counting, asking, both - pick two

Isaac was able to sit in my lap and count (with my help) in the tadpole book. He has rapidly progressed from sitting by himself, miscounting, and loosely pointing, to sitting in my lap, being willing to allow me to guide his hand, and patiently pointing with me. He seems to be understanding the expectations of counting and reaching those expectations. He's getting closer to doing it by himself, but I still have to hold his hand and guide along with emphasizing the last tadpole. He can tell when we're done by the inflection in my voice; otherwise he would just keep going.

In the past, we've taught him how to ask for help, ie, "I want help". Then we tried teaching him to say how he needed help (ongoing with his first therapist and others), but it never really stuck. We were reading through a picture book where I say "where's the hat" or "where's the monkey".
On his own, last week, he all of the sudden had the ability to say "I need help to find the monkey". He was able to make the connection and append how he needed help. It was amazing.

Also, he has been able to say longer sentences. I would like to keep track of the length of his statements and quantify his progress. Today, for example, he constructed a sentence of 11 words.

Anne and I often hold two objects up and say "pick one". He has surprised us more than once and said "I want both of them", demonstrating the ability to go beyond the current concept.

In the midst of his progress, I notice that he still struggles on the simplist of exercises. For example, I've tried to work with him in choosing 2 puzzles out of his animal puzzle box (monkey, lion, alligator, hippo, etc). He can happily pick 1, but he struggles with the concept of not picking one, but two animal puzzles.