Frustrated

Jen (SLP) brings the same toys each week. While our DT and OT feel the need to often buy new things to keep DS interested, Jen always seems to find a new game for the same old toys. She amazes me. The beloved little chubby cars are an all time favorite for DS and Baby Sis. We've worked on everything from  choices, to scripting play, to crashing and tolerance for 'oh-no' with those cars. 


Today, we were working on 'Thank you/You're Welcome and Excuse me'. Jen used her little bag of bears to talk about where they were driving to, scooting the cars around saying things like, "I'm going to the fair.... oh, can I ride? .... Yes....Thank you.... You're welcome". DS was playing along quite nicely, taking our prompting and modeling for the Thank You's and You're Welcome's very well. He was amused and enjoying our playtime quite well. 


But we realized that when he chose to put a bear in a car or ask for a seat, a Yellow bear could only sit in a yellow car and a blue bear had to ride in the blue truck. Then he started moving OUR bears around because they were in the wrong cars. We all (Jen, DH, and myself) looked at each other and decided to stretch him a bit. I like to call it the SET-UP. 


OOOOOH. He did NOT like that at all. We moved the bears about, taking them different places and changing cars. All the while DS was saying, NO NO NO.... as if to say that they really couldn't sit in the wrong color car. NO NO NO!!


After a while of that, he decided it was ok if they sat in the wrong color, but he assigned new colors to each bear and still HAD to sit in the color HE deemed appropriate.


Once we pushed him just over the edge we gave in and Jen asked him if he was FRUSTRATED?? We worked for a few minutes on what FRUSTRATED means. He said, yes, he was Frustrated and we moved on. 


Later that evening... DS was at the dinner table writing in the air, squirming around in his seat, doing everything OTHER than eating or engaging with the rest of us. So, we told him to put his hands in his lap and we started asking him questions about his day.


What did you have for breakfast today? Did you go to school? Who did you play with? What did you play? Was it fun? 


He was going along with our questions pretty well, although we had to keep reminding him to keep his hands in his lap and no writing in the air to keep him engaging with us. 


And then, Did you go pee-pee in your pants today?


.......All joy wiped from his face, he hung his head. Put his face in his hands. "I'm frustrated".........


OH. Sweetheart. It was all we could do to console him and keep our tears at bay in that moment. He's never shown any emotion about going potty or having an accident. Never. But the way he hung his head showed the shame in his mind that he never had a word to express before.


Oh. My baby boy. I'm so sorry I didn't think about how it makes you feel for me to talk about it all the time. I'm so glad you have one more word to express that you FEEL just as much as we do, you just don't always know how to show it.