"I know how to reign him in."

The stars aligned and Blink woke up calm and happy this morning. I explained the situation and he was comfortable going by himself.

When I picked him up, I asked the teacher how he did without extra support.  She smiled and said, "He did pretty good. I know how how to reign him in now.  I can just tell him I'm not going to do it all for him."  She's had him in classes before, which I think helped tremendously.  I again felt a little pang that Blink at his best is still...definitively different, but it was clearly a success.

I got the sense that he demands a lot of attention in a group setting -- far more than his fair share -- but that he wasn't disruptive or explosive.  But also that her job will be easier when our wonderful PCA is better. (Stomach flu, poor thing.)

Whew! I'm relieved.

Flying Solo?

This week, Blink has morning day camp at the awesome artsy-science nonprofit in our neighborhood. He has been attending programs there, with PCA (an aide, essentially) support, for years. This summer, especially, it has gone pretty well. The main problem tends to be that Blink can get rather...enthusiastic when excited about something and he doesn't know when to stop asking questions.  He also has trouble with cleaning up at the end of something.

So today started off a new weeklong camp -- Raiders of the Lost Junkyard. Today the teacher set out an array of electronics and tools and told the kids to dismantle away to find pieces they can use to build their own creations.  Heavenly, right?  Blink sure thought so.  (He's making a sculpture of Boba Fett.)

I bring all this up because wonderful PCA just texted me to tell me she has been throwing up all night.  So, tomorrow...  I think I might try to send him solo.  I could go and act as an aide, but I think that would be embarrassing to him.  No, I know it would be. Then there's the little problem that his camp and his sister's let out at the same time.  I suppose the thing to do would be to pick her up a few minutes early so we can be there if any clean-up strong-arming is needed at the end.

Wish us luck!  This is uncharted territory.

Getting Unstuck.

Blink came home from the long weekend at his father's in a mood. He wanted to get on the computer to look up the price of a specific Lego item and he was pretty agitated about this -- it had obviously been a source of contention with his father.  I was pretty wary, too. It seems like whenever I let him get on the computer, particularly Lego. com, he gets more and more escalated.

So I said no.  He got upset.  I ignored.  I told him, "You have a problem. Your problem is that you're stuck. I will help you with your problem when you're calm."

He got calm and tried to talk to me about it again.  And here I was unsure.  He was calm -- that's good!  But he still wants to check it -- does this count as badgering? (yeah, I guess....)  It wasn't a particularly unreasonable request on its own, to check a price....  But it was feeding obsessive behavior.

So I made him a deal.  He had to not talk about it for a half hour, which would take us up through dinner time.  And agree to go for a walk/scooter ride after dinner.

He agreed and held his end of the bargain.  So we looked it up.  And it was nowhere to be found on lego.com.  I found it on Amazon for $30, which was three times more than he was expecting. I tried to help him find it on the Lego site so we could have a good idea what the baseline price was...  But no dice.  I was nervous, thinking this would surely push the kid over the edge.

But no.  I closed the laptop and shrugged and he said, "That's weird."  And we went on our walk/ride.

Three Days...

The past three days, Blink has gotten more exercise than he did in the entire last month. And the number of challenging moments?

Zero.

I know, three days isn't long enough to bank on.  But I'm feeling some optimism, and after this past month, hoo boy, is that a good thing.