April 22

This week we got a little over 12 hours. Since I count Sun-Sat as the week, part of this count was from the Outreach.

Monday I had a volunteer to watch Amy and I got a solid and wonderful 2 hours with Sarah. It was one of the best sessions ever. I felt more energized and creative and relaxed. I picked Bunny's Noisy Book as my theme. When I first showed it to S she clearly said no so I tossed it aside saying "no book!" then she wanted to eat at the table in front of the mirror. As she pressed the yogurt top I talked about the sounds it made. Then as she was eating and started talking about honey I said that bees make honey and I grabbed the book and showed a picture of a bee. She then allowed and attended to a lot of looking in the book and my pretending to be a bunny jumping down a hole or eating or stretching or sneezing (she did pretend sneezes). She tried saying "down hole" several times. So we had a pretty solid hour and half of connected play and then she asked for the cakes/candles. My asking for criss-cross sitting avoided the frog (exclusive behavior where S sits in a W position and then lays down on her belly and mushes herself into the carpet; we don't join this ism) and we played with candles for half an hour. A tiny bit of that was engaged (singing happy bday to a bunny who progressively got older, pretending orange candles were carrots or bunny teeth). Most of it was joining, sometimes dropping candles in each others hands. I felt so much more at ease and could enjoy this time as hanging out with my sweet girl playing with a toy she likes. When we were done our time and came down to say goodbye to my friend, Sarah made very solid eye contact with her twice. I know that often she does make good eye contact, but something about this felt very clear and solid, somehow notable. Carl then had a good hour that evening working outside with ball throwing as a theme.

Friday night I started training a new volunteer and saw more clearly than ever that it is important to have people other than me to work with Sarah. She needs the variety and each person brings new ideas. When Sarah started playing with crayons and putting them in a box and dumping them out, volunteer S. made a game out of it and was genuinely enjoying playing with the crayons. Since I am so used to Sarah playing with crayons or candles or whatever in an exclusive way I might have not engaged her in play and instead joined. But we want to attempt engaged play until Sarah clearly indicates she needs her space and is exclusive and then we join. What was beautiful was seeing a new and fresh approach to the crayons, doing what Sarah wanted but with free enthusiasm and no assumptions. After a few minutes, Sarah then shifted her body so she was closer to volunteer S. Sarah is very clear with her body language. When she wants to block Amy from sharing a toy, she body checks her. So this nudging in closer to the volunteer was a clear indication that Sarah liked the game and the connection and that is what we are going for!

I have been so proud of all of my volunteers for taking in M.'s feedback and acting upon it and for being open to my feedback. Go team!!.

I have been reading Barry Neil Kaufman's To Love is to be Happy With. It is excellent and is helping me think differently about parenting.