David Weekly, V3 - 10

This week, David has been adjusting to the time change. It's the first time he's had to deal with it so directly. Before, last year, and the years before, when he woke up wasn't so important. Now he's got to be awake by 7:20, so we can have him ready and out the door by 7:50, to be at school by 8. So I have to awaken him. And it's rough. It's hard for him to go to bed, too, earlier. He just lays in bed with his blanket, making his little noise, and sometimes he talks to himself, though I can't hear enough to make sense out of it. Other times, he gets books, and I hear him paging through them.

And I have mentioned that he can read before, but it continues to impress me. He is able to read about half the words in the "Apples up on top" book, though I have to make him read them, because he tries to already know what they are, as if they were in a certain order. And he's beginning to get the sounding out of words, too. I work with him at bed time every night on reading words. We get a Highlights magazine every month, and David is always excited to get mail with his name on it. And then we read it, usually a couple of times over the course of the month. It helps a lot with his various skills. There's the "Silly things in the picture" and the "find the hidden items in the picture" and lots of poems with rhymes and small words...

David now will randomly tell me, "I love you, daddy. You're so sweet." I don't know what triggered this, but I get a kick out of it.

And I forgot to mention that he had picture day last week, so I'm hoping to see the proofs at some point soon. I will then be able to send out order forms to whomever would like one.

And about his behavior: this week has seen big improvement. I gave him a bigger goal that just a treat at the end of the day: if he can have 4 of 5 good days, then he gets a Diego DVD. My expectation of him was that he listen to the teacher, and that he control himself. He proved this week that he can have slips, but still listen to the teacher, allow himself to be redirected, sat in Time Out, and then recover and be fine. I was not expecting perfection, and I didn't get it. But I was expecting improvement, and got much more than I asked for. He actually had 5 good days. And the incidents were smaller than he'd had before, so improvement there as well. I figure another week of this type of improvement, and we'll start to fine tune, and get some more self control, and continued better behavior, until I hear of no incidents. I talk to him every day about what the rules are, and how he can handle his anger when he gets angry. It's making a difference. I'm so proud of him! And he got his DVD.

So that's a week. I hope you've had a good week.