Reciprocal RCR

Turn taking went fairly well. We did have an adjustment in the beginning because Pooh was still trying to do assembly line patterns. He also just doesn't want to do the activity sometimes. When that happens, i make sure that he is close to me, i ignore his rants and griping and usually what finally brings him around is when i say "all right, I'll just wait until you're ready." His response is usually "oh, all right, I'll do it. But I'm NOT doing it again" He's already got the nice teenager attitude. So yes, even though we do the activities and are successful with most of them, it's not smooth sailing. As a general rule, once he's into the activity he enjoys it and forgets that he didn't want to do it at first. I try to end with a nice little "we had so much fun TOGETHER" or "we did it TOGETHER". I'm supposed to be emphasizing the togetherishness of our activities so that he can see how much fun it is to have another person around. LOL So that Emotion Sharing becomes important to him.

I think the resistance to activity is still from a basic lack of competence. I know he has many memories of not being able to (or his perception is that he hasn't been able to) participate well in many things in the past. He doesn't want to try and not get it right the first time. He's much happier looking at books about ships and subs, drawing pictures of said ships and subs and giving a commentary on ships and subs. He actually made up his own Reading Rainbow show today as he was talking about subs. Complete with the part where it shows the kids recommending what books to read. So, of course, the books he recommended were the library books he had checked out on WWII subs. It's funny and yet at the same time, sad. It's also incredibly annoying.

The one relief i have in sight is that once he's done with one obsession, he's onto a new one. Before the ships and subs, it was planes--supersonic jets, WWII planes etc. Occasionally, even i learn a thing or too. Although, i try to stay out of it. I don't like being sucked into the vortex.

His capacity for learning this stuff is pretty amazing for a kid that isn't reading yet. But that's a blog for another time.