long time no blog!!

So much has happened since the last time I wrote this! We have had an outreach from the lovely Sarah Darque :) Ben has met lots of new volunteers and we have tackled the dreaded 2am bedtime!

Outreach

Having an outreach visit from Sarah really made an impact on our program. It was so nice to have someone to give me some feedback and so full of amazing ideas for playroom themes.
We have now started to introduce themes into the playroom in a big way. My theme at the moment is buses and bus wheels, Ben loves them so I've been printing out lots of pictures of wheels and building cardboard buses for him etc. It's given him the option to use his imagination in a way I never thought he would. It's great to see him so excited about a game that I have brought into the room and even when he only looks at it for a while then goes back to his own games, it feels so precious to have that little window of flexibility.
Sarah has helped a lot showing us how to introduce a new game into the room and it has made our program so much more fun.

volunteers

Since the beginning of September I have been recruiting new volunteers from the universities. Ben loves to meet new people and he has been busy building relationships with his eight new volunteers. This brings our total at the moment to 12! I am always amazed at how many people want to spend time helping Ben and it is easy to feel grateful to them when I see his progress.
I hope to include some volunteer profiles on the website before Christmas.

Bedtime

For a while now bedtimes have been getting out of hand, I began to feel helpless and stuck in a cycle of going to bed at 2am and getting up at half past 10 in the morning. We would go up to bed and Ben would just jump up and down on his bed until he finally fell asleep exhausted. I think I got to the point where I was so tired I couldn't think straight, and it was only when I started having to almost drag him out of bed to start our program in the mornings that I realised how out of hand bedtime had become.
A couple of weeks ago I decided to put my foot down and read all I could on the son-rise web site on sleep and bedtimes :)
The plan started with me taking him up to bed at 9 (and making sure no one else was going to wander upstairs and disturb us!) I read with hm for 15mins then said it was time for bed and sellotaped the light switch off!
He got up over and over and I spent the next 3hrs putting him back in bed over and over again. It was really hard to be passive as he was kicking me and hitting me in the end. I never move him about when he doesn't want to be moved so this was quite hard to do!
Eventually though he got the message and laid down and asked me to lay on the bed next to him, he fell asleep about half 12 which was amazing compared to 2 o'clock.
The next night we did the same again but this time it was only an hour of putting him back into bed and he fell asleep at half 11.
After that it just kept getting better :) He now knows that we go upstairs at half 8 read or play quietly for 15mins then switch the light off and go to sleep. He is usually asleep by half 9 and always by 10.
I honestly didn't think it would work and am still waiting for the rebellion. In fact I feel that it was me that caused the 2am bedtime by not setting the boundaries properly, Ben really didn't know when he was supposed to go to sleep.
Bedtime has gone from a nightmare to a dream and I am so thankful again for the son-rise program and all their wonderful staff :)

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