Aidan has a gift for challenging himself, in his good time.
Last fall our old vacuum cleaner died and we got a new one. Aidan was terrified of it. At first, he cried whenever I brought it out of the closet. All this winter, whenever it came out, he would run into the master bedroom, the most remote place in the house, and shut the door.
Around spring, he started coming out of my room after I switched the vacuum off, to tell me “I need to hug the vacuum.” He would approach it reverently, give it a brief faux embrace and run off. The next step was wanting to wrap the cord, which he expressed as “I want to do the up and down.” (because when I’m helping him wrap it, I help him with mental motor processing by say “up, down”).
The other day:
“MOM, I want to do the vacuum!” Wow! What a sudden breakthrough! So the day Clare’s friend was coming, he vacuumed the upstairs. And today he asked if he could vacuum his daddy’s home office, which inspired Kevin to put away all the boxes that had been living on the floor space for several months.
I am so encouraged not only by his motivation to “emerge” but also by the way he is incrementally mastering various self-help and life skills on his own time-table. He loves to help in the kitchen, as well. It gives me a projection into his eventual adult life. Of course, we don’t know what the future will hold for him but the more he can cope with these kinds of tasks and show desire and ability to learn, the better it will be.
His occupational therapist called up sick today and won’t be up here again until the 19th. Summer’s always a scanty time for formal therapy but he seems to progress pretty well in the interims, too.
Aidan and one of his teenage brothers.
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