Bathtub Artist
“Green is the prime color of the world, and that from which its loveliness arises.” — Pedro Calderon de la Barca
Sorry to be light on posting the last few days. We’ve all been feeling under it this week. I’m also working on a few improvements to the blog, which I’ll hopefully get done this weekend along with some posting.
In the meantime, here’s another achievement to celebrate! Even though J-Man has felt bad all week, had all sorts of weird sleep patterns, and has decided that this would be a nice time to assume the role of terrible-almost-threes-tantrum-monster, we did have a big positive. He decided to color!!
To make a long back story short, he has never enjoyed using crayons because of his sensory issues and fine motor control problems. It seems like he can’t figure out how to use the crayon, it somehow feels icky in his hand, or both. He tends to hold slender objects (like spoons, crayons, pens, etc.) at the very end with as little finger skin as he can get away with. (see first picture below) This obviously makes it very hard for him to self-feed from a spoon.
I had him ’sign’ a birthday card for my sister the other day with a crayon. Usually if we get a couple of dots and a random line, we’re happy. Even that takes a lot of effort usually. This time, he kept running the crayon back and forth and I had to take it from him so she could still read the card.
Night before last, he took one of his bathtub crayons (easy clean-up!) - very specifically the green one - and colored the edge of the tub for a good ten minutes. He has NEVER done this. He even held it some of the time in a ‘normal’ writing grasp (see second picture). Woo hoo!
After a couple of years of occupational therapy, we have coloring! On the one hand, I guess that could be depressing. But every victory is hard fought, and you gladly take every one of them regardless of cost. As you can tell in the last picture, he’s so proud of himself. That makes EVERYTHING worth it.
5 comments
Go J-Man! I love his smile!
That’s awesome! And he’s so clearly so proud of himself! My son took some washable markers to the bathtub when he was about J-Man’s age, and I think we have some similar pictures. For a long time he also held pens and crayons with a weird grip, but I was watching him play with his Nintendo DS (which has a nice motivating stylus!) yesterday and noticed that he was using a standard grip.
WOO HOO!!
That’s my nephew!
(How is J-Man at scrubbing the tub?)
@magicdrgn - Thanks! Yep. His smile has won the hearts of thousands. He may not be all that social sometimes, but his eyes light up the room regardless.
@Mary (MPJ) - Go your son! J-Man is fascinated (well beyond the point of fixation sometimes) with his little LeapFrog computer. It’s helping him learn letters and how to intentionally hit the right button (and not just mash them all until what he wants happens). So if it’s a DS stylus, or a little computer, or whatever, if it’s helping develop new skills, run with it! We’ll take that kind of thing any way we can get it.
@JB - Well I can say that the Magic Eraser pad did well, though washing bathtub crayon off involves it transmogrifying into this Easter Egg dye-like puddle that you have to soak up. Clean is clean, though.
Though they did say that he helped straighten up the toys at preschool on Friday. So my natural reaction, “where did you put my real child?”
Those are the kinds of things he does somewhere else but not at home…
hehehe……wait until you see the beautiful “Sharpies for Toddlers” gift pack I found for his birthday present!
And he straightened up the toys at preschool? Wow. That’s awesome.
Tell J-Man his Uncle Juan Carlos is here, and he says hello, I love you, and thanks for the card.
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