On the Road to Success
This week I hunkered down and focused on two things at home, Forest’s brushing and Logan’s potty training. And I’m happy to say that we are making great headway with both.
Forest is wearing clothes that he hasn’t worn in months and gets into the car seat without any upsets. The car seat success is HUGE for me and him both. We are going to finish off this week doing it every 2 hours and then move to only 4 times a day next week, not seeing the OT again for 2 weeks.
My insistence on being gentle but consistent with getting Logan on the potty training is paying off this week as he’s no longer upset about sitting on the potty and has been using it because I get him on it regularly. He had an accident last night and he seemed pretty upset about it so I’m hoping this will be the pivotal point when he starts wanting to go on his own. But if not, at least we have a good routine going and for us, that’s 80% of the battle.
The weather is finally getting warmer here so we will be trying to keep up these routines amidst park trips to enjoy the great outdoors. But I think we are in a good place and well on our way to two big successes for this year!
Weekend in Photos
Despite Brad having to work a lot this weekend, we still managed to get outside and enjoy some of the beautiful spring weather in Austin. Saturday we spent the afternoon at the Austin Zoo, Sunday morning I took the boys to a newly discovered park just down the street and Sunday afternoon we flew a kite. Next weekend is the annual Kite Festival and Brad is going to take the boys so we thought some practice was in order. The boys loved the kite so much that they were still talking about it at bedtime last night. Logan kept telling us, “I want to go to the kite festival!” so that we wouldn’t forget.
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Is It Possible?
We started “brushing” Forest on Wednesday for his Tactile Defensiveness, today is Saturday. That’s what, three days? Yesterday I noticed that he didn’t fret about getting into his car seat and we had no trouble when he put on his pjs. Things that normally can leave us both in tears. This morning, he put on a shirt he hasn’t worn in over a month and wore a brand new pair of pants that he’d been refusing for weeks saying that they hurt or tickled. Again, not a single peep about the car seat bothering him or his pjs tonight.
He always had bad days and good days with his tactile defensiveness before but lately it had all been “bad” days. I don’t want to jinx it but it really does seem like the brushing is already making a difference. He hasn’t been this relaxed about his clothing in so long I can’t even remember. I’m amazed, excited and leery of being too excited too soon, all at the same time.
Tactile Defensiveness Occupational Therapy Begins
Wednesday’s occupational therapy appointment was pretty straight forward. She did some basic tests to figure out where Forest is developmentally (kid is super smart, in case you were wondering) and then I changed his shirt so that she could see how he reacts. She showed me how to use this small medical brush (looks exactly like the kind they use in the hospitals on newborn babies) to brush his arms, back and legs. It’s not a light touch but instead a very firm one, which is good because he’s so ticklish (a sign of the sensory disorder as it turns out). She also showed me how to do joint compressions on his wrists, elbows and shoulders. His leg joints can be compressed by having him jump up and down.
I am now doing this every 2 hours, trying to get in 6-8 sessions a day. He seems to really like the brushing and enjoys helping and doing it to other people. I am just being conscious not to interrupt his play or otherwise make it feel like something he “has to do”. I don’t want him to attach any kind of negativity to the experience and then become resistive. Even Logan is learning how to do it, which again is pretty cute.
Forest’s case is so mild that we are only doing the OT once a week for now and she said we may move quickly to once every two weeks. I’m curious to see how quickly we see change. The OT’s challenge to Forest was to wear a regular shirt to his appointment next week. He’s only been wearing his pj shirts turned inside out after sleeping in them all night for the past few weeks. Him putting on a regular tshirt again would be a huge step. I’m concerned that he has a lot of anxiety about putting them on though because of his previous discomfort coupled with our reactions of “you have to wear a shirt!”. I hope that our switch to “hugging it out” and otherwise going with the flow and no pressure about clothes will eventually win him over so that he feels comfortable enough to just try again.
Snow in Austin
First off, tomorrow morning I’m taking Forest in for this Occupational Therapy evaluation tomorrow. We are looking forward to hearing what they have to say.
And in case you didn’t hear, it snowed in Austin today. We woke at 6 AM hearing the sleet falling and found that it was accumulating into ice piles in spots on the ground. By 7 AM big giant fluffy snow flakes were falling. It’s 2 PM now and the flakes have tapered off and I see a lot of dripped water on the trees and from the roof. But it was fun while it lasted. (updated at 3 PM, it’s snowing big flakes again!) Forest was exclaiming about how neat it was and how much he liked being out in it which was a huge improvement over the last flurries we had where his tactile defensiveness made getting him dressed so difficult the whole experience was ruined. I’m glad he got a re-do with even more snow.
A few weeks ago I noticed that Forest can actually answer me when I ask questions “why” questions. What’s really cute is that he starts the sentence saying “That means that I…” followed by his explaination. A couple days ago Logan started using Forest’s expression and is also answering “why” questions about his emotions, etc.
And last but not least, pictures of the snow!
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OT Bound
Last week the pediatrician confirmed my thoughts that Forest may have tactile defensiveness and gave me a diagnoses of “sensory integration disorder” so now we are off to schedule him for an evaluation with an Occupational Therapist.
On Tuesday I’m going to sit in on one of the boys’ tumbling class and take some pictures and video to post here. Can’t wait to show off my little gymnasts in training.
An exciting post, I know. I did it again…got out of the habit of writing so this little post is an attempt to get back into updating the blog more regularly.
Struggles and Solutions
I don’t remember when or how it started but it crept up over time and has become such a major part of our lives. Every single day we struggle with getting Forest dressed. His clothes hurt him, he says. Sometimes it’s a full on mini tantrum, other times it’s a few moments of upset and then he moves on. And then again and again for the next hour. Until he either gets used to his pants or shirt or we change them into something that bothers him less. He says the seams on his arms and inside his pant legs hurt him. His socks drove him crazy but we fixed that easily by turning them inside out. The same trick for pjs is a huge relief as well. But getting out of the house for tumbling class or to go to the store, getting him to wear a coat in 30 degree weather, it’s painful and exhausting.
So the other day I was searching online for clothes without seams for toddlers and came across softclothing.net where I not only learned that someone is in fact starting to make clothes without seams but that Forest may in fact have something called Tactile Defensiveness. I don’t want to be accused of diagnosing him via the internet so I’d much rather say more about it after we go to the doctor. I have an appointment on Wednesday afternoon with his pediatrician and if it is TD then we’ll be going to an Occupational Therapist (OT) for the actual evaluation and treatment.
Since mentioning the possibility publicly, I’ve had a few friends share with me stories about their children having TD of various magnitudes. Forest’s is extremely minor but it’s become disruptive to his life and our life as a family so I think it’s important to research our options. I’ll write more with each step and as always, share our experiences and my knowledge in case someone else is going through this same experience.
Potty Training, Twin A
I started off the month of February dedicated to getting Logan potty trained. Forest has been trained since September/October (I don’t remember exactly and am too lazy to go look it up here) but Logan still shows absolutely no interest. He’s completely uninterested in the sticker chart, the M&Ms or any other reward I’ve tried. I’m sticking to a 30 minute alarm on the stove so that he’s getting used to it interrupting his play time and the fact that he’s going to sit on the potty whether he goes in it or not. It’s not a fight and we read books or play with toys during that time, so I figure it’s not a bad thing. I guess I just need to stay patient and we’ll see where this leads in the next few weeks. It’s just exhausting.
The Magic of Change
With the passing of the pacifier came a new development that I hadn’t expected. Forest doesn’t always nap now. Like Logan, it’s hit or miss and the days of the one hour afternoon quiet can’t be assumed. *sigh* Forest doesn’t do as well as Logan without a nap but he definitely has made vast improvement over how it was last summer when he skipped naps.
The good thing though is that the boys are playing so well by themselves now. They spend hours using their imaginations to create new worlds and imitate the life around them. The little Batman figures take a shower and go to the bathroom in their batcave. Their baby is taken on picnics in the living room. Cars are driven across every surface reachable and often fly through the air. And anything and everything talks. It’s wonderful and magical. So much so that “magical” has become a bit of a mantra for me recently.
It seems like so many things that are part of life, part of the ordinary, are such a given that they carry a bit of the extraordinary in them. Just like the magic of sitting there feeling the babies in my womb would jolt me to the core with the intelligence and majesty of biology, so too does this phase of imagination and imitation. The independence is challenging but it too carries so much magic to me. I find myself in a place of innocence as I look around and revel in the magic that is all around. The irony is that I’m currently reading Neal Stephenson’s book “Quicksilver”, a historical fiction about the heyday of Natural Philosophy and Isaac Newton in England and the new colonies in America. As I laugh at how they believed flies spontaneously were born out of dead flesh, I find myself using the word “magic” simply because I find the processes of natural growth beautiful.
But now reality slivers in and I’m off to see if I can magically convince these two very busy three year old boys to take a break in their day and give this Momma a break as well.
Pacifier? What pacifier?
Forest has been a pacifier junkie since birth. Before having kids I had a very strong dislike of pacifiers but was willing to let it slide for bedtimes. Logan gave his up at five months but we hit 3 years old with Forest and I was so ready to say goodbye to that thing. Being the information junkie that I am, I had read up about pacifiers and knew that there was no harm in Forest’s using one now or even for another couple years. I’d read that kids usually give them up on their own between 3 – 5 and that was ok. So I went into this as a bit of an experiment. Let’s just see if he’s more ready then he knows he is.
I’d read some mentions to people using the “pacifier fairy” as a means to the end and thought we’d give it a try. Like the tooth fairy, the pacifier fairy takes the pacifier(s) (passing them on to new babies) and leaves a toy in it’s/their place. So I mentioned this to Forest a couple times and he cutely changed the name from pacifier fairy to pacifier angel. Who am I to know the difference? On New Years Day we mentioned it several times to Forest and he agreed that he was ready to do it that night. During a grocery store trip I picked up a neat toy for him and at some point I realized we should do a bit of a ceremony to help him understand what it was all about.
That night Green Daddy, Orange Daddy, Forest and Logan and I gathered in the living room. Green Daddy placed two of their old bibs that I had as keepsakes into a basket to represent them growing out of that stage. Then Logan placed in a diaper representing his willingness to give up diapers and start potty training soon. Then Forest placed his pacifier in the basket. We rattled their silver baby rattles and they each were given feathers in place of the diaper and pacifier.
At bedtime we realized that Forest thought he’d be able to give up one of his two pacis and get a present. Didn’t want to admit that it meant giving them both up. After he fell asleep, Brad and I discussed it and decided to go for it anyway. Both were put away for emergency (Daddy’s a softy) and the new toy was left out in it’s place. Forest woke in the morning missing his paci and wondering where the toy was. After I showed it to him he was distracted for a few hours. I told him to come and give me big hugs when he got sad and missing it. We had a few hugs that day but he was able to get a nap and to bed that night without any misadventures. We are now on day three and he hasn’t asked for it all day. Not even for his nap.
I think we got lucky on the timing but I’m happy to say that we are now a pacifier free household. Whew!
