Tuesdays typically are the longest days of the week for Henry. He starts his ABA therapy at 8:30 and wraps up at 11:30, just in time to have a quick lunch and head to preschool. He gets done there at 3pm, and after I walk him back home, he has a couple minutes to grab a snack and then it’s off to drum lessons.
Henry likes the drums, but has been a little unmotivated for lessons lately, and I can’t say I blame him. That is a pretty long day for a grown up, much less for a five-year-old kid. With summer coming, his preschool will be coming to an end and his therapy hours scaling back, so we’re hoping he’ll show a little more interest then.
We had our monthly meeting with Henry’s ABA therapists that morning and discussed drums. They had some good suggestions about scaling back expectations and just trying to let him have some fun, with maybe a couple minutes of instruction.
It was a solid plan, and I also had a nice talk with Henry on the way home. He was a little grumbly about having to go to drum lessons, but came around and seemed in pretty good spirits about it.
When we got there, I talked about the strategy Henry’s therapists came up with, and he was all on board. Henry actually sat down at the drums and appeared like he was going to participate. Then things took a turn.
I was all set to go do some work in the waiting room when Henry came out, asking to use the bathroom. I took him, and when he came out, he went into total rebellion mode, refusing to go back to his teacher, and then running around the room, hiding in any small corner he could find, and laughing as he did it.
The laughing can be a sign that he is escalating, and it was pretty clear he was. He wouldn’t listen, and i wasn’t able to reason with him. He wanted to play an old display piano, and I had to chase him around to get him away from that. Eventually I told his teacher I needed to have a few minutes with him to try to settle him down.
We went outside, and I tried lots of calming methods like rubbing his back, but he wasn’t having any of it. He was on the verge of a full on tantrum, and I didn’t know what to do. He started trying to run away again, and I was starting to think that we might need to just go home.
With about 10 minutes left in the lesson time. He finally agreed to go back inside. When we went in the door, Henry’s teacher was playing the song “Happy” and drumming along with it. That caught Henry’s attention, and he finally agreed to go back in.
Exhausted, I collapsed on the waiting room couch.
The good news was that Henry wound up doing really well for those last few minutes. Hopefully that is something we can build on. I was glad for that. But I was also admittedly completely exhausted from the experience. Those little dust ups can be emotionally and physically taxing, and i was pretty beat.
We got back home and decided to order in some Thai food and take it easy. It was what the doctor ordered. Henry was back to being in good spirits, and Amelia was excited to show us what she learned about multiplication in school that day. She is doing great!
And as I often do, I wrapped up the day with some crazy pup play. They have managed to completely destroy the toy we gave to Asta for her birthday a few weeks ago and now are dedicated to shredding what’s left of it.
It was a pretty full day, and in spite of a pretty rough turn for a little while with Henry, all’s well that ends well. Another thing I can’t help but think is that 6 months ago, that kind of escalation from Henry would have gotten much, much worse. Yes, we still have our difficulties sometimes, but I don’t lose sight of how far he’s come and how well he’s doing.
