POSITIVE PARENTING, AND AN IPAD

This week has been very interesting and full of excitement and drama, and its not quite over yet.  On Tuesday, my wife and I attended our first PPP (positive parenting program) workshop.  This workshop was called the Power of Reinforcement and it taught techniques on how to reinforce certain behaviours associated with kids like ours.

Most people with experience, in dealing with children with an ASD, know how important positive reinforcement is.  But we found, as always, there's still so much for us to learn.  The key thing in using reinforcement is....consistency.  Of course we know that, but being consistent is very difficult, especially when it come to things like routine and reinforcement.

Sometimes being on top of your kids action can be hard.  And often with Jacob, he waits until long after the situation that caused his anger is over, all before getting mad as he explains it to us.  We do however, have experience in seeing the signs of anger before they surface.  If we see the signs, we can intervene, but if not, we have to deal with the fallout.

Needless to say we learned a lot and are looking forward to our next workshop, which isn't until early April.  But there's lots of things to read in the meantime.  Then on Tuesday at school, Jacob received his ipad fully equipped with a keyboard and loaded with his curriculum.  Now thanks to our sons school requesting the ipad for Jacob, he will hopefully have an easier time transitioning from subject to subject.

Before the ipad, when Jacob would change subjects in school, he would become upset simply because of the change.  But now it's as easy as switching apps, which is easy for Jacob to do since he own an ipad already.  I know it's only been a couple days but he's already shown improvement, which is a good sign.  If the ipad eliminates just one outburst, then we'll be thankful.

Now for the drama.  The weather here this month has been very unpredictable.  In the beginning of the month, we received a foot of snow.  Then it rained heavy, then it snowed again, then it warmed up and rained this past week.  And of course, my basement began leaking.  I know the house is 100 years old, and that mother nature is pretty tough, but we had hoped that the waterproofing could come at our leisure.  Luckily, it leaked in our laundry room which which happens to be the only unfinished section of our basement, so there's no damage.

The forecast says there's no precipitation expected for a couple weeks and a waterproofing company already came out and gave us a good estimate for repair.  So, fingers crossed, because we know how accurate weather reports are, we will get our basement back to normal by the end of March.

Like I said earlier, what a week.  Even though I have a loose schedule, I still can't wait for the weekend.  Because March is already looking incredibly busy.  We're getting our bathroom renovated, the basement waterproofed and its Jacobs 9th birthday, all in a 3 week period.  When I look at the long list of stuff that's going on, I can't wait to get back to work so I can take it easy.