Four days and counting...

Jack has been fairly good lately. He hasn’t had many melt downs and can usually be “talked” out of getting upset or into doing something he doesn’t particularly want to do.

However, today, Jack woke up from his nap in a particularly bad mood. I can always tell when he wakes up in a bad mood because he immediately starts whining about every little thing in a deep, guttural whine. He asked me to put in a VHS Thomas movie into our main TV and I complied because I had to start making dinner. Vanessa asked me if she could watch a movie on our portable DVD player (in the same room). Normally, this solution prevents a fight over the TV. This time for whatever reason, it really upset Jack. He wanted to put a different Thomas DVD in the portable DVD player and watch both movies at the same time. Obviously, this is unacceptable and unfair for Jack to monopolize both TVs and I refuse to give in to that sheer and blatant selfishness.

I asked Jack to pick which movie he wanted to watch. He chose the DVD, so I proceeded to stop the VHS Thomas movie and inserted Vanessa’s choice. Jack immediately started to ramp up to “melt down”. I started to negotiate with him and say that it was his choice: pick a movie and let Vanessa have the other TV or a time out (this generally works for him). He continued to ramp up and refused to share. I gave him one more chance to make a choice, but he refused to share. So, I brought him to the time out chair and he continued to ramp up further and quickly. By this time, although it had only been a short period of time, I was losing patience because of the blatant selfishness and unrealistic demands he was displaying—even he knew that taking up both TVs was not fair.

I was cooking dinner and had to step away so that I wouldn’t burn dinner. He started throwing the throw pillows off the chair. I internally ramped up and could feel myself losing my temper. But as I turned to go to Jack again, I caught a glimpse of the life-sized, stuffed golden retriever we got to prepare Jack for his service dog. I ran and grabbed it and started to bring it to Jack. By this time, Jack had gotten off the time out chair and was running towards me full speed ahead (he was that mad). I dragged both the dog and Jack back to the time out chair, which only made him unravel further. As soon as I got Jack sitting, I said: “Pet Sassy! Pet her now!” Jack hesitated for barely a nanosecond to process what I was telling him to do, then started to pet her head. Not hard, just deliberately.

A remarkable thing happened. Within about 10 seconds of him starting to pet the dog, he stopped crying and yelling. I could see on his face that the act of petting the dog had distracted him enough to just take a breath and calm himself down. I couldn’t believe how fast it worked and that it worked with a stuffed animal. He stopped petting her and I told him to keep petting her and he complied. He then looked me in the eyes and then hugged me without saying a word. I asked him if he was ready to share and be a nice boy and he nodded his head “yes”. I told him he could go, but he had to take Sassy with him. So he dragged the dog with him and sat down and watched his movie.

This entire episode transpired in only about 5-10 minutes. I was in awe. Just think, if he was this receptive with Sassy the stuffed dog, how incredible having Sassy the real dog will be for him. Sassy will be here in 4 days and I am counting down every second…