Brycen & his Froggy

Froggy has been in Brycen's life since he was born. He was a gift from his Aunt Brenda and has always had a place in Brycen's crib/bed for the past 4 1/2 years. Surprisingly, Froggy is in fabulous condition!

I've been using Froggy recently in our night-time ritual of teaching Brycen how to say/gesture "I love you." He has been giving Froggy kisses (huge step because until a few months ago, the blowing kisses had been lost) and hugging him each night. I then start by saying "I" pointing to my chest, and then Brycen points to his chest with no noises typically in imitation. Most of the time, Brycen will then take over and pat his chest for "love" while making a noise, and then points at me saying "ooo." In the beginning, I used Froggy as my model for pointing to his chest and so on. It took Brycen about 2 months, but now he will do all of this with the prompt of me saying "I" about 80% of the time.

If you have a child that can't say "I love you" then you know what a huge feat this is and how much it means! We take so much for granted in life and this (along with waiting for the day for him to say "mama" again) has been something I have been wanting for so long and was not sure when the time would come! I'm so happy the time is here:)

Now, back to Mr. Froggy! Every once in awhile, Brycen will become obsessive with Froggy and insist on bringing him downstairs to "play" and will then resort to just throwing him everywhere. This ends up with me taking Froggy away and Brycen becoming upset.

I was very surprised to find Brycen playing "appropriately" with Froggy this morning while I was doing stuff in the kitchen! I don't leave the kids alone together due to Brycen's aggressive tendencies (and Aubree's attempts to encourage his aggression), so I am rarely in the kitchen for more than a couple minutes and can see them through the dining room at all times. Anyway, here are a few shots I was able to take quickly before Brycen realized I was taking his picture of him playing with Froggy. It wasn't completely appropriate for his age range, but it was far better and more structured of play than his usual throwing him around!

I LOVE this last picture of him and Froggy walking! I'm not sure where this came from but it's definitely imaginative play and it was AMAZING to see!

Obsessions

Everybody knows about Brycen's obsession with trains...movies, books, toy trains, real trains, puzzles...anything and everything trains!

Recently Brycen has started two new obsessions. The first started about a month ago when he received a simple, wind-up race car from the school van driver for Christmas. Since that night, he has insisted on it sleeping in bed with him. When I first mentioned this, many people commented that their children sleep with an assortment of toys too (both typical and non-typical developing children). I didn't ponder it too much back then, but slowly he has been adding a few more things to his bed lately. He added in a toy airplane that we bought for him from the airport during a vacation that Mike and I took last year. Just this week he has now added in two little train pieces. Overall, he doesn't really play with them unless he wakes up in the middle of the night. Lucky for us, the batteries in the airplane have now died and I refuse to replace them and listen to the noises of a plane taking off at 2am or 5am. The race car itself is quite annoying too!

Anyway, so after some looking over a few child development websites, I realized that Brycen must be reaching the developmental age when children start to do this. Aubree started this several months ago shortly after she turned 2 (though she always liked to sleep with a little "blankie" as an infant). She insists on sleeping with 7-8 stuffed animals in her little toddler bed every night. When we pack her bag for overnights with the grandparents, I try to limit her to only a few. While this points out once again how far behind Brycen is in development, it's actually a relief to see that he is slowly progressing in these other areas. May seem like a small milestone to some to form an attachment to something like a favorite toy to sleep with, but this is huge for him...and for us!

The other new obsession he has is with the phone. When he was a baby/early toddler years, he did a lot of imitating with phones and pretending to talk on them. He was actually given 3 different play phones for one Christmas! Unfortunately, this pretend play is one of the many things he "lost" when he regressed. Since we moved in September, we have noticed this pretend play coming back in the form of pretending to talk on phones. A couple months ago, I also caught him holding one of Aubree's baby dolls and pretending to feed it a bottle. While these are the only things I have noticed that he will do with pretend play, once again it's a huge step for him to start regaining some of the skills he lost at regression. When we walked into the Child Psychiatrist's office the other day, he immediately walked over to her desk and picked up her phone. Luckily, she didn't mind at all! The last two times at the therapy clinic, he has tried to CLIMB the half wall to where the receptionist sits to get to her phone. He pulled his therapist over to the window yesterday and was able to grab the phone briefly. I had to give him my cell phone once outside to play with to keep him happy.

Both of these things probably seem so small...but with what we have experienced with him in the last two years, we realize just how important these little things are. Slow and steady will win the race!!

Imaginative Play

As most of you know, Brycen has major deficits in "imaginative play" just like the majority of children on the spectrum. The way he plays with toys is very methodical and stimulating to him and we have to be constantly teaching him to play appropriately with them. In addition to that, he does not have the skills to know how to play pretend, so when Aubree wants to play with her kitchen stuff and hands him a cup to pretend to drink...Brycen just throws that cup across the room. Same thing with baby dolls, dress up, stuffed animals, etc. He prefers to just line all of them up (see picture below) and stare at them with his head on the floor to ensure they are lined up according to his standards. Building with blocks is either building up or in a line...he doesn't understand that he could build a house or other object with them.

Recently, the teacher did share with me that he has frequently been picking up a play phone at school and saying something similar to "hello?" in imitation of the other kids. At home, he has also done this a couple times. A little progress!

So, you can imagine my surprise and joy when I walked towards the living room this morning and found him like this...
Yes, that is Brycen (sorry about the dark and blurry picture, but I only had moments to get this snapped without him noticing!) feeding one of Aubree's baby dolls! No prompts, nobody to imitate in the room....just Brycen all by himself holding a baby in one hand and a bottle in the other. AMAZING! Of course the moment was very short-lived and when I asked him about it a couple minutes later, he chose to pick up the baby and fling it across the room.

What a great glimpse into those little things he is slowly storing away in his brain but we just don't get to see that often!