Owen gets fixated on a particular sound or motion. Sometimes it has to do with my reaction and other times it’s about the way it makes him feel. He has extremely sensitive hearing and any noise can be a noise to him. I have a heating pad that has a neck massager built into it. If I leave it running, while I get up for a moment, he will rush over to it, putting his ear close to the noise. Sometimes he leaves it on, other times he turns it off. There are lights throughout our house that he doesn’t want on. He will scream “de making any noise”, and flip them off. And there are lights that he doesn’t want off. I lay in bed, in the middle of the night, trying to decide if it’s worth it to go to the bathroom. The creaks of the floor, the closing of the door, I shouldn’t flush the toilet, and the outside world has its own noises that come racing into our house to wake him. I tried to use white noise to drown out some of the sounds for him, but he woke up every night and turned off the noise. I tried a couple of different machines and even his tablet with songs and noises. None of them worked. One day at a time, I remind myself. Yesterday, on the way home from school, he brought up painting. I have to say it brought a sparkle to my smile. He listed things he wanted to paint. “Wanna paint a background let’s paint a church Donald Duck let’s paint Mickey wanna paint a fire truck”, he said and kept listing so many things I lost track. I don’t have him paint with me every day, but more when I can sense his ability to focus on what we are doing. We started painting together to work on his fine motor skills. We do a hand over hand method and he helps me paint the backgrounds to our art. Lately, he’s been talking about painting more and saying things like “we make a de cards from our painting”. He has been painting more of his own paintings with me holding at his wrist and him going through the motions. It’s exciting to watch him paint. I will show him a picture, help him with the paint on his paintbrush, and then explain what part he needs to paint. I’m so thankful it is all coming together for him and that he enjoys it. This is a year in the making and his progress is amazing. I tell him he is my miracle and I’m thankful. Never give up on your dreams and know that amazing things can happen when you set your mind to it. Smiles to all and donut daze!
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