As I’ve mentioned a few times, we’re nearly done with the Monster’s first real summer at day-camp. (To give you an idea of how deep into the summer we are, Color War began at their camp today.)
I’ll admit that I’m not really sure what he’s getting out of the summer, but that’s not really the goal of the entire operation, is it.
To me, the most important things were:
- Having fun
- Keeping the skills from regressing too badly before school resumes in late August
The first is really hard to judge, given that the Monster is not very verbal with us – he doesn’t tell us how his day went, and we’re somewhat relying on the notes sent home by J, his one-on-one aide. (And we have to nudge him every so often to remind him to tell us what’s going on, because there’s the occasional day where he doesn’t write at all in the log book.) If we take the log book at face value, he’s being increasingly verbal at camp, socializing a bit with his bunkmates and he’s even anticipating the activities he likes and chiming in.
The second is a mixed bag, since we’re still feeling like there’s been regression. We’ve gotten him – with a lot of struggle – back to where he was in terms of his toilet training and the like, but we’ll have to wait to see what’s going on when he gets back to school.
I have to admit that I’m more concerned about the first than the second, and that’s where I want the money to be going. I want him socializing with normally developing kids his own age, and I want him having fun. And if that’s what he gets out of the summer…
Course, if he could tell us what he was doing, that’d be even better…