Experiments

So I am basically doing an experiment this summer. Kiddie movies are $2.00 at the Malco theater so I'm taking Selah in an attempt to teach her how to act in public. The first movie we saw was "How To Train Your Dragon," so I have named my experiment "How To Train Your Selah." We used this same method with Korban and he does pretty well in a theater now. My motto is let them practice while it's cheap. Plus the theater has good air conditioning and you can't beat that.

She loved the dragon movie, especially Toothless, the Night Fury dragon. She called him
"kitty." We saw Charlotte's Web today and she also liked it. Turns out she is very fond of pigs. These little movies are also good practice for me. I tend to load up like a pack mule and I'm also clumsy, so I consider this a training maneuver. We left the movie early today to go pick up Korban from his summer school class. When we stood up to go, I was balancing Selah, an overstuffed diaper bag, and my purse. Her snack bowl popped out and went rolling several aisles away from us but a nice man retrieved it for us.

Korban has therapy at The Autism Center of Tupelo on Mondays and Wednesdays, extended school year classes on Tuesday and Thursdays and occupational therapy on Fridays so we are busy. The comment has been made to me that we just need to "let him be a kid."That sort of stung. And my response to that was "He doesn't know how to be a kid. That's what we are trying to help him with." It's true. He's not like Rain Man or anything, but his idea of playing is trying to toss something into our ceiling fan. I'm serious. So part of his therapy is just learning how to play appropriately with toys. And I can't even put into words how happy it makes me to see him driving his little bulldozers and tractors. Seriously, the first time Brad and I saw him driving a car rather than just spinning the tires while humming, we let him stay up past his bedtime just because we didn't want to tell him to put the car up and go to bed. He does work very hard and we are careful to reward him for that and we try to do as much fun stuff as possible. So I think it sort of evens out. He is improving, even though that is easy to lose track of sometimes. I pray we are on the right track and not overdoing him or missing out on something he needs. But we are doing what we can, so I guess I just need to be at peace with that.