One of the Monster’s goals on his IEP is social turn taking, in the context of a game with other children.  This isn’t a new goal for him – it was on last year’s IEP, and I think it was on the year prior’s – but this year’s was redefined to be more achievable.  Specifically, it allows for more adult guidance/redirects to keep him on target.

Which anyone who plays with kids will tell you is a good and necessary thing.

So a few days ago, R suddenly was brandishing a “Trouble” game around the house.

Board games aren’t really anything new – R likes board games, or games of any kind really – and we’ve made various attempts to get the Monster to play a few of the basic classics.  Candyland tends to be a disaster just from the sheer number of cards that gets involved, and Chutes and Ladders is a bit complicated for either child, when they have to keep going back-and-forth along the board’s rows.  But Trouble, apparently, was a big hit with R when he had some time to play it with his mother.

Tuesday nights are the night that I’m in all evening with the boys.  (My wife has her karaoke league that night, so she’s gone at dinner time.)  This gives me time to find things to do with the boys without them having the option of running to Mommy for relief from whatever I’m inflicting on them an alternative activity, and last night, I decided that we’d give Trouble a try, especially since the Monster seemed to be interested in it.

I won’t say that it was a shining success of his ability to attend.  Even with the television off, his attention was wandering quite a bit.  But, with a little bit of guidance, the basic idea of the game was something that could be conveyed to him, there were minimal pieces he could lose, and I was able to hem him in enough to play most of the game with R… even beyond the point where R grew bored with the game.

Baby steps…