The Monster Turns Six

It seems that we’ve survived another trip around the sun – today is the Monster’s sixth birthday.

I feel almost like I’m writing last year’s entry all over again.  Just like last year, the wife’s off to the school with cupcakes and an activity, and we’re holding off the birthday party for a few weeks to avoid Mothers’ Day (and the Preakness next weekend).

But I think, looking back on last year’s entry, there hasn’t been as much progress in the last year as there was in the year prior, and we’re trying to put our fingers on what exactly has changed since then.

He’s still hit-or-miss with toileting during the day, and he’s not getting up at night at all to go to the bathroom.  We’ve transitioned almost fully to regular underwear during the day, and he’s making it through most days just fine… but there’s still the issue with #2 and the fact that he’s really not quite willing to go to the bathroom if he’s aware that he needs to go that way.  Not sure what the fix is there…

His writing has improved a little bit, but not measurably like it did in the year before.  He’s still doing fine writing words and numbers, and is roughly at proper grade level for that kind of stuff.

On the other hand, depending on the situation, he is showing more interest in other children and people in his environment.  He’s still requiring prompting to do the talking part of things, but he’s happy enough to play around with R if R’s trying to do something, and he likes his cousin Z well enough as well.  I’m not sure what he does at school, who he plays with, who he’s friends with…  because he doesn’t seem to have a structure to tell us.  Even when we’re prompting him through narratives, it’s like pulling teeth.

The big change, as I’ve mentioned though, is that it looks like this next year will include his moving into a less restrictive environment.  Between that and other supports we can try to put in place… we’ll see where the year goes.

 

Happy birthday, Monster.  We love you.

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