You’re the boss, Brandice

Canipulation

I finally got Andrew to “write” today. I don’t push it because he gets so angry with himself, when he can’t do things perfectly. Then that leads to a meltdown and NOTHING gets accomplished. It’s not something that I ignore, I just try to approach it from a different angle. It all started with a fascination of 4 pencils sitting on the table this morning. He compared their sizes and decided he liked the “small one”.

I asked him if he’d like to practice writing today, and he said “YES!” I pulled out some bright fun yellow paper, and we began. We were practicing circles because circles are the shapes of train wheels, and nothing is more important that train wheels. Then we drew some straight lines on some paper, which immediately turned into a huge rectangle to make a big “Rhanus” from the Thomas the Tank Engine stories.  Then I asked him to try to make a zigzag. He responded with a firm, “No.” So I said, “If you try to make a zigzag I will give you some candy.”

He took my paper from me because it had fewer circles on it, and apparently he needed more space. I mean, when you mention the word candy or chocolate to this kid, he gets serious. Then he tried his best to make a zigzag. His points were more rounded than pointy, but he did a good job. More importantly, he was OK with it not being perfect. Then I asked him to put a smiley face in side one of his circles. He did, and then commented about how funny the smiley face looked.

People, this is what we call progress. Andrew is super smart, he just hates to do anything that requires a pencil or a crayon. He builds amazing things out of Legos and constructs “robots” out of different things in his room. Those are the things that make him proud of himself.  He felt good about himself after he drew something on his own, and that made me so happy.

Bill Cosby and Mortimer Ichobod Marker ain’t got nothing on me.