Sep 7 - AP Meeting and Eggs

Today was a GREAT day!!!

Quiet morning - Yoav woke up at 6AM and we just did the usual - blocks, books, cars... Because of his B Complex NAET treatment, we could only eat white rice, which was a bummer. White rice for breakfast is a pretty bad way to start the day.

We went to the AP meeting from 1-3 at Hudson Library. The meeting is held in the Children's room which has LOTS of toys, including a lot of push toys, a full wooden kitchen and a bunch of plastic food, a wooden slide, etc, etc! In the beginning, when it was just us and another girl who's a few months older than Yoav, Yoav was pretty nervous - saying "mine" and holding tight to the push toy he was playing with. I used Active Listening just as I had planned yesterday during this period - I just said, "You're nervous that someone's going to take this toy from you?"

But as more people came and he became comfortable with the kids, he really relaxed! Most of the moms in our AP group are very hands off, interjecting only very occasionally, if it seems necessary or helpful (like once when Yoav and another boy were each pulling at a videocassette box, the other boy's mom said, "You both want the same toy." (which is Active Listening) and it worked perfectly - they both relaxed and Yoav let go and went to play with something else). Most of the parents are comfortable letting the kids work things out for themselves. A few times I saw Yoav and another child playing with the SAME TOY at the SAME TIME!! That's nearly unprecedented - once three boys were playing with a toy at the same time!!!!!!!!!! I love to see him involved in this sort of play as I think this is the best way to learn about sharing. Turns are helpful, but are so artificial and are, at best, compromises. Kids can actually get the full enjoyment out of playing with a toy while another kid is playing with it also - the toy that this happened with was a pop up type - you push a button and the door opens and a toy pops up - so each kid got to play with one or two buttons and each seemed quite happy with the arrangement (no parent involvement). I used Active Listening a few times with Yoav - "He/she tried to take this toy.", "He/she pushed you.". Once when there was a conflict over a ride on toy with an older girl (there were two cars, but the girl took Yoav's and sat on it), I said, "She sat on the car you were playing with." He said, "Yea." I said, "That makes you sad." He said, "Yea." Then I quietly pushed the other car (exactly the same) closer to him so he could see it and he took it and off he went.

As far as I know, he didn't *grab* anything from anyone else the whole time - he did try to *take* (take, in the sense that it was not an aggressive act) the videocassette box, which was described above, and, once or twice, he would just start playing with something that someone else was playing with and the other child would walk away and then he'd continue playing with it - but he probably would have been fine in these cases playing *with* the other child.

It was really amazing to see - I feel like I really learned a lot - I'm particularly glad that I had recently learned about Active Listening, because it seems like that's the only form of communication generally needed for playdates. Plus now I know that he can play happily alongside other like-parented children so I think I'll be more empathetic when we're in a different situation and I'll try to be more aware of my own need to fit in and make the other parent/s comfortable.

After the meeting, we went to Whole Foods and then home. Yoav played w/ a 5 or 6 yr old boy on the bus. The boy had a balloon sword and he was slowly moving it into our seat and would gently touch it to Yoav and Yoav would laugh and laugh. Or Yoav would poke his finger back to touch the sword and they both thought that was funny. The boy even started singing a little song that Yoav tried to sing :)

At home, we did another egg test - Vitale said not to eat any egg while he was away (for the past 3 wks) and we did some home treatments to boost Yoav meanwhile. Tonight he ate about 80% of a scrambled egg with no reaction!! We'll have it again for breakfast - his last reaction was in the morning - Vitale thought it could be because Yoav ate the eggs on an empty stomach so potentially it was an egg + stomach acid problem. We'll see tomorrow!!!

Yoav fell asleep at 6:30 - with Jer away, I just get the evening to myself to clean, email, blog, read, etc...