Monday, July 23, 2007

July 22, 2007...and it continues

And it continues.

There have been slight improvements in Jakob's mood but overall, he's still pretty disagreeable. I feel badly for him. He can't help it, he's just out-of-sorts and he can't pull it all together. This is what they call regression and it happens from time to time. Sometimes we take 2 steps forward and one step back. This time it feels like it's 10 steps back. Squeal, yell, squeal, squeal, squeal...quite a party.

We're back to trying to find his "Happy Place". The good thing is since we've done this before, we know what it takes. First and foremost, a lot of patience. And since he can't yet tell us what's the matter or why he's upset, we just gotta watch closely. Gotta know when we can jump in and when we gotta go slow. Gotta remind him that anything can be fun. And we gotta listen to him. The listening piece is the most important and the hardest since he doesn't have words. Respect him and his space, always.

Each of us has our limitations...stuff we're just not good at, stuff that we just can't tolerate, stuff that's overwhelming to us and stuff that upsets us. Jakob simply has more limitations than the average bear and has never been able to express how he feels about anything. He's never been able to say "I don't want to" or "I don't like that" or "please don't do that". I can't even imagine what that would be like...extremely frustrating, I'm sure. And I don't blame him for getting upset...not one bit. If I was being pushed beyond my own limitations (which I am well aware of) and wasn't able to say how I was feeling, I'd squeal too (and probably kick, slap or punch...we're so lucky that Jakob doesn't do that).

The one really bright spot right now is the DynaVox. He's starting to figure it all out. He's used it to ask for cookies, take a bath and he seems to really like the button that says "I want Mom". Pretty funny. With help, I've done some programming so the buttons are for things that he'd likely want. The food section was easy. For breakfast, cookies and banana. For lunch, hotdog, cookie and grapes. For dinner, macaroni and cheese and cookies. And for snack, cookies and candy (which is actually fruit juice snacks that we call candy for short). He and I have sat for extended periods of time and spelled words out with the keyboard. We spell the word, hit the touch screen and it says the word...very cool. It's fun to watch him learn the keyboard...I can see the wheels turning and I know he's memorizing where all the letters are. I'm sure he'll be a professional typist in no time.

And then the fun will really begin...we'll find out what he's thinking, good and sometimes maybe not-so-good....we'll see...

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