gracie tidbits

Some of you may know, Grace has very odd behavioral problems. This isn't rare for kids with delays, but really is the only thing about her that can be frustrating. When she sees Jennie (and occasionally me) across the room or otherwise not paying attention to her or when we eat in front of her she cries and screams. Other random things can trigger these fits as well. I would feel bad for their upstairs neighbors, but they are insanely loud themselves, so I don't feel so bad. Jennie has been seeing a doctor who specializes in behavior modification. If Grace cries because we're doing something that drives her crazy, we have to completely ignore her. Once she calms down, we have to wait about a minute to go talk to her so she can tell the difference between the bad behavior and the good behavior. We have been kind of doing this for the last two months, but not waiting the full minute. We tried this Tuesday, which was a disaster, but a good disaster. Her behavior got worse (which is normal) and she screamed for probably at least an hour. She would almost get to the minute of being calm and we'd go to praise her, but as soon as we turned around she'd wind up again. Once we fed her dinner though she was being very cute.

So, yesterday a little before dinner, Grace was screaming her head off at us and we ignored her, but the amount of time it took her to calm back down was significantly shorter. I was feeding her dinner and she was taking these HUGE theatrical bites, it was hilarious. Jennie was working on a project for McKay's class while we were watching Ratatouille, but was kind of hiding where Grace couldn't see her. She sat with me on the couch for a bit. She was laughing at the movie and every once in a while she would cuddle up next to me and just giggle. It was too cute! Grace scooted her way to the floor and poked her head around the corner to see Jennie and instead of her normal fit, she just crawled to her and laughed! Jennie ended up not needing to hide and Grace was being so good. She even ate dinner in front of her and didn't have to feed her Cheerios or play with her like she normally would have had to. We still have a little bit of a road to go, but after just one day of being very diligent Grace is already learning that crying is not going to get her what she wants. We're also trying to teach her to use the communication skills she DOES have to let us know what she wants. She's been doing pretty good with that, sometimes I have to guess what she wants, because she only says "hi", but I've become pretty good at guessing!