progress

M played with figures today- he actually dumped out the little people we have and had them play a role in the zoom the car game he was playing.

He and D had built a runway, and had the toy airport and then M put luggage on the conveyor belt, and had a man take the luggage to the airplane, while D had a taxi come to the front of the airport and pick up passengers!

I cannot believe it! What an amazing step in the right direction.

When M was 3 I took him to a therapist to help do "floortime" with us. Basically, at that point in time the thought was that M was autistic and that he needed some specialized play that would help him to allow me into his world. So for an hour a week we sat in the therapists office and she would "teach" floortime to me and then she would critique how M and I played together- mostly how I played with M cause I was ALWAYS doing it wrong.

Now remember, at this point in time I was a 28 year old Nursery School director, who had always been told that I had a knack for working with children. My old director even used to criticize me because I "played too well" with the kids, and didnt let them guide their own play experiences enough.

So, to have to take my son for Play therapy was a smack in the face.....however to then sit through play therapy to be told that "I was not playing well" truly had me on the brink of a break down.

After 4 months of play therapy, I decided we were not doing any good for my self esteem AND M was not making any true progress, plus it was getting harder and harder to find child care for D while M and I had this horrific hour of therapy together, so Floortime was stopped. Sure I continued to play at home, and did my best to guide his play. We even tried a few other theraputic methods to teach M to play, but in reality, my guess is that play for M was something that he was going to do in his own time.

So tonight...I am announcing, apparently THIS WAS IT. IT WAS HIS TIME. Using the toys that we have had since he was 2, M created a play scheme, and used figurines to play through the theme of going to the airport!

We are on day number 4 and life is still really, really good!