OK, so I’m back after a long Thanksgiving break…obviously too long because the kid that I left on the 19th is NOT the same today! Tony has had some MAJOR developments over the past 10 days.. and I mean major! Today’s session was completely amazing. Tony was focused and concentrated with almost everything. It was a little tough to start out with because he had just gotten up and had to ‘warm into’ working with me. Tony is not as good in the evening because it’s so close to bedtime and all but fortunately I am going to start coming on Tuesday and Thursday mornings now. Anyway, it was already dark so we could not do any activities outside (another disadvantage of working in the evening) but we did do some good things inside. We did a lot of “jump” as Tony would request it with the verbalization. Also, we did “ahh boom” where Tony would say “ahh” and then I would fil in with the “boom” and throw him on the couch. A few times we reversed it and I did the “ahh” and Tony said “boom.”

Tony continued to amaze me as we worked on puzzles later on. I brought the puzzle with the animals in it over to him and I dumped the pieces on the chair. Tony picked up the pieces without any prompting and put all the pieces in their place within 30 seconds. So can I just say this was the same puzzle I tried to get him to do 2 weeks ago..only then it would take at least 5 minutes to get him to focus enough to work on the task. Unbelievable…..oh..but I continue..

Tony’s eye contact has been insane. I had him over on arm chair..he sat in the chair and I sat in the floor with him. I did peek-a-boo (inspired by Elizabeth’s blogs) with Tony using my shrug sweater (that’s right, Anton). I would throw the sweater over my face and then I would remove it saying peek-a-boo. So I did this twice and then Tony started playing along and would pull the sweater down off my face and say peek-a -boo back and giggled. I did the same to Tony, putting the sweater over him and then I would pull it down and he would say an approximation of “peek-a-boo.” We also did the head-shoulder-knees-and toes song (Elizabeth has started this). Tony loves it and we did it a few times as Tony started repeating me…but they were again, approximations to the real words…however, I was completely stunned when we worked on toes. I kept grabbing his toes and saying “toes” “I’ve got you’re toes” while he giggled. Then suddenly Tony grabbed my finger and took it to his toes and clearly said “toe”!!! Whoo! Tony is so smart..I swear the child is just brilliant. In the chair Tony also did a lot of echoing…he took crayons and put them on top of the chair and then would let them fall down. Since he whined when I started to take him over to the couch to work on ‘roll ball” I decided to play along and say “fall down” when we dropped the crayons. Tony caught on immediately and started saying “fa-don”!! Again…just sheer brilliance!

So..I’ve written a lot but for a good reason. I can hardly believe this is the same Tony! He was singing a song to himself and playing with the pillow in the chair and pointing to the designs…(imaginative play)! He has calmed down a lot and seems much more focused. He walked over to his ‘wire bead toy” unprompted near the end of the session and started playing by himself…singing a song and looking over at me smiling while he was playing. So my question is…what HAPPENED??? Whatever it is..it’s WORKING! Everyone, great work and keep it up!