Tuesday, March 03, 2009

New Therapist (subtitle: The Big Box)

We finally received our mattress for Grace last week, and I found enough time this weekend to set up the girls' room the way we'd like it (reintroducing Grace to sleeping in her own room comes later). Not enough time to pack away the toddler bed and the crib mattress, however. We were also left with a huge, go cart sized box in our living room, the bane of parents' lives because these boxes tend to have 9 of them. This one has been no exception. It was a cat rest, a roller coaster car, and a race car briefly, until Aly realized the amount of effort it would take to push it down the hall with Grace inside. She spent 1/2 hour prepping it with duct tape and it spent 2 minutes in actual operation.

I'll not get into the details of the battle for this box, suffice it to say that both Jason and Aly had vied for the cardboard... Jason had lost. When Aly had given up on the race car project and was about to begin the dismantling, when I intervened and passed the prize back over to Jason. Jason took off with it and began creating something called a Pat Pat Rocket. Gracie had just received this thing related to the Disney show Little Einsteins, so I am new to this whole rocket business. But here's Jason jumping in, getting Grace involved with the designs on the inside.

Linda told me Jason has been doing wonderfully with Grace, interacting and getting her involved with imaginary play. From the play category, Jason's pretty much the polar opposite of a 'concrete thinker', preferring to make up things as he goes along, mixing up medias of TV shows, Legos, video games and anything else that gets lodged in his head. He's has a very warped imagination (he's my son after all)! All that imagination pours out and is a perfect foil for Gracie's scripting and repetitive language. They spent hours in the spaceship, pressing the imaginary buttons and going on imaginary 'missions' that Gracie is following along with and enjoying. The ship is still residing in the middle of our living room, although I am not so averse to it's existence...at least for now.

So, we can add Therapist to Jason's long list of potential career paths: Screenwriter, actor, writer, dad and anything else that requires an overactive imagination. Thanks, Jay

1 comment:

Elaine said...

As you are very well aware, the prevalence of children being diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Disorder is increasing at an alarming rate. We would appreciate your assistance in helping us try to identify if the use of epidural analgesia/anesthesia and Pitocin during childbirth have any association with the development of autism.

If you are willing to participate in a survey questionnaire, please email Elaine DeLack, RN at elaine@edmsllc.com and the questionnaire will be emailed to you for your completion.

Thank you in advance for your participation in this research.