'A' has a tendency to sleep terribly, to be honest he wakes every few hours, comes into our bed, and still wakes every few hours for a drink. If he is sick he wakes twice as often; sometimes calling for an evening nap that stretches nearly to our typically scheduled bedtime. So I've decided to take that well-rested and focused energy and midnight skill training ensues.
His love for balls goes way back, it is the only toy he'd play with functionally as an infant and toddler; we managed to expand on that with balloons, and introducing spinning wheels on trucks as being 'round like a ball'. We are not afraid to use stereotyped stimming activities if it means progress in another area, we're also not afraid to help that game to grow with them.
He has poor attention management skills. So we are working on this. The games usually are, how long can you keep him functionally engaged in an age-appropriate game, regardless of his other skills. This usually lasts about 10 minutes. 5 minutes per game, if it goes past 10 minutes he loses focus, can become dizzy and resulting in a safety risk to himself (pure clumsiness). [we are waiting for an ENT assessment for middle ear issues.]
We play gesture games, he communicates his wants by exchange objects, pictures, or modeling for us to the best of his abilities. His nature pushes the modeling and sign language is something we are starting to find a way to inject into our home life. Not in any traditional means, but as an aide to speech. More importantly he is making increasingly sophisticated attempts at modeling for us to copy for him. He is starting to understand how to copy us in order to get the same results. Marching to his own beat at all times, we're showing him its fun to get to know the music of others and to find the harmony between the two.
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