Noticing the trees

Noticing the trees was an amazing moment in the park at the weekend. Ben walked up to a tree stroked it, looked at me and said 'tree.' I was so amazed and grateful that he had taken an interest in them and startled that he knew what they were called. I know that sounds silly but he doesn't look as if he is taking any notice of me when I talk most of the time, so for him to have learnt the name for a tree and to want to share that with me is awesome :)

We have been going for walks without the big pram as well this weekend, Ben has found great ways to relax when he gets tired, like sitting on the floor and even riding on grandmas trolley.

He is really enjoying his playroom at the moment and enjoying it when his volunteers come to play. He is so excited now in the mornings when someone comes he runs upstairs with a big grin on his face and says things like 'great look' and 'well done Ben' It's so cute that he appreciates our praise so much hes started to give it back to us.

Looking forward to Sarah Dargue coming next week to help us with our feedback and training. Sure Ben will love her as well.

xxxx

Nice calm day.

Ben has been in a really calm mood today, we played first thing this morning for an hour and had great fun. It was very slap stick :) the games Ben thinks of are far more fun than mine! He again wanted to play with the cube/dice but he put a new spin on it himself by including it in all the other games we play. So for example when we were bouncing with the coats on our heads he would get the cube and press a button saying sneeze or cough and want me to cough or sneeze on the coats. How cool is that?

I went to put posters up in Hope university this afternoon and was expecting him tobe upset but he was really calm and happy to be in with his grandma. Anne-Marie played as well in the afternoon and he was very happy to see her. He loves his volunteers :)

Am meeting a girl called Julia tomorrow, another prospective volunteer, so ope it goes well.

Off to try bed time, at the moment I go up at 9 and sit there for 2 and a half hours until he falls asleep! Been getting him up early but it doesn't seem to make any difference :)

xxxxxxxxx

Park or No Park?

Today has been an interesting day :) Ben woke up in a great mood and we played in the playroom for a couple of hours in the morning. I had a rethink about the falling down game and decided that if he had to press a button on me, that would be like pushing me and that's something I've been trying to stop him doing. So I made buttons for the wall, couldn't get him interested though and we ended up playing the dice game again. I'm not complaining about that because it's great that he wants to play it so much.

In the afternoon we went in the car to the park, it had been raining and the slides were wet. There was no one in the park when we arrived so I used the paper towel from the car to dry them :) I know thats really sad, but after about ten minutes lots of kids appeared because the rain had stopped. I'm sure they would have appreciated my slide drying if I had been odd enough to tell them about it!

Ben followed a toddler around for about ten minutes trying to straighten her trousers as they were crumpled on top of her welly :) She was really freeaked out in the end and I had to stop her and strighten it before he rugby tackled her. He just can't stand clothes to be in the wrong places and the leaves, oh they are so in all the wrong places!

He had a great time then a friend called Karen turned up with her lovely son Daniel. Ben was not amused, he doesn't seem to like me speaking to people at all especially in the park. He was so annoyed he headed out of the park, I thought he was going towards the car but he ran like mad down the street. I always try not to grab him as it upsets him so much, so I jogged beside him hoping he would turn around. In the end though I had to because he started to try and dodge past me into the road. Once I had hold of him he went beserk so it seemed a long walk back to the car!

He got quite upset when we got back to the house as well and it took him about half an hour to calm himself down. We finally got back to playing about 4 o'clock.

I'm thinking about whether or not going to the park is a good idea now, he has been really good all summer and it's been great for me as I've met lots of people and had a chance to talk to adults :) Something has changed though and Ben seems to be pretty unhappy every time we get home and sometimes while we are there. I'm finding it hard to decide what to do as I like going to the park and I know that Ben wants to go, even though he has trouble coming home.

I'm playing first tomorrow then Anne-Marie, then I have to decide whether we go to the park or I try and encourage him into the playroom again. It's a good job he's so cute.

xxx

Welcome to Ben's son-rise blog

I'm hoping to update this blog most days to let all of Ben's friends and family know how his program is going from day to day.

Eamonn and Aisha have been playing today and Ben has had a great time.

I had to put a new lockable door knob on the play room yesterday as, during his session with Aisha yesterday morning, he managed to waggle the door enough for the bolt at the top to come loose. He didn't know what to do but decided that the session must be over if the door will open and shut and proceeded to say 'bye bye' to Aisha and bring her downstairs.

During our session in the playroom this afternoon Ben played with our dice theme for fifteen minutes! He said 'cough,' 'sneeze,' and tried to say 'hiccup' and pressed the buttons on the dice. We've been trying to decide whether he knows which words are which as he gets it right quite a lot, I'm happy to believe he can pick the right one until proved wrong :)

Our trip to the park this evening was also fun, Ben found a boy of about the same age and made eye contact, he smiled at him and said something that seemed to be in his own language. The other boy smiled back and they ran around the park together for a while. It was really nice, I can't wait for him to have more words to say to other children

xxx