Zoe (Part Four)

Zoe: Part Four

Part Four: No progress

Over a period of the first couple of months, I was getting increasingly concerned about him, because I was not seeing any real degree of progress either in his level of communication or in terms of any lengthening of his attention span.

But his father told me that he was becoming less destructive at home and screaming a lot less, so there was some definite progress in that direction. I decided to continue working with him.

I was actually enjoying my time with him, as his level of curiosity was so high that nothing escaped his attention. So as quickly as he left one project, I had another one for him to work on.

Some were relatively simple and some were quite complex. I maintained a high level of verbal communication with him. There was almost no verbal response from him, but I could see that he enjoyed and responded positively to the songs and the nursery rhymes, as well as to the rythm of music.

He loved to draw and paint or simply have a story read to him, although he seldom sat long enough for me to read a whole children's book. He was just a very busy little boy.

When he would become extremely active I would take him outside and let him run, after a ball or whatever. Sometimes we would just go exploring in the back yard and find all kinds of treasures or just go for a walk.

When we first started playing with family type toys, he would physically bash the other family members, particularly the smallest one. Gradually, that ceased as he began to realize that it was not acceptable behaviour.

While he was not punished as such in a verbal or a physical sense, it was made apparent to him that there were things that he should not do. He was rewarded for his positive behaviours and not rewarded in any sense of the word for negative behaviours.

Negative behaviour patterns got no attention at all and he soon realized that what he had been doing at home, was not going to work with me.