Getting Ready For School

Summer is going by fast. I had set goals for what I wanted my son to learn this summer. Well, you know what they say about best laid plans. He has accomplished one major goal: potty trained. Awesome! Do you know how great it is to finally have my ten year old son out of pull-ups? I don't have to remind him or tell him to go to the bathroom. He now stops whatever he is doing and goes to the bathroom on his own. When we are away from home, he will tell me on his keypad if he has to go to the bathroom.

Another goal that he has accomplished is taking his dishes to the sink when he is done eating. We no longer have to prompt him. He is doing automatically 100% of the time. Yeah! One less person I have to pick up after. My six year old daughter is getting lazy about taking care of her cups and dishes.

Now, I am working on independent communication and attending to school work. He knows how to use a touch screen and used to use it all the time for me. Then he started school last year and regressed. I can't get him to use the keypad independently. If you watched the video in my previous post, you would have seen how he takes my hand and guides my finger across the keypad. Needless to say, this doesn't go over well at school. This coming year, he should have his new communication device and we have all agreed that there will be no facilitated communication with it. He will have to access it independently. I am also going to use the same give and take reward/punishment system that worked with potty training.

Life in our crazy world is good. I worry about my son's future. I explained to him over the weekend that in eight years, he will be an adult with adult decisions to make. My husband shook his head and said that right now he is just a kid. I told my hubby that our little boy needs to understand why he needs to work on doing things for himself. He needs to know what it means for his future. Eight years doesn't seem like a lot of time when I think about all that he needs to improve on. I know he is capable. He just needs the right incentive. In the end, my hubby did not agree with my point of view, but my son did. Today, he actually applied himself to the work I wanted him to do.