This vacation was planned by Juergen, with the primary purpose of attending his Vietnamese colleague's wedding on Christmas day in Ho Chi Minh city. We're there 11days 10 nights and need to move 5 times(!), so I was prepared for the worst as Dylan usually doesn't settle to sleep well on the first night in a new place. Usually he's all excited and go exploring every nook & crany and jump a lot. So when the first night, notwithstanding walking quite a lot, he couldn't sleep till 1am (midnite local time), I wasn't surprised. But by 4.30am (3.30 Vietnam time) he was already awake & ready to go out - he tried & actually managed to open the room door but thankfully, he came to hold me by my hands to go out with him, rather than just run off as previously had done.
Anyway, thankfully, the subsequent nights he slept well, even as we moved every 2-3 nights.
During the vacation, I continued him on his Samonas auditory therapy, as well as RDI objectives. For Samonas, Dylan listens to the nocturne CD for 10 mins twice a day. He enjoys the music. But as the same CD has been listened to for rather long, already 5-6 weeks, he sometimes try to remove the headphones before the time is up. Thankfully, after I had to send the headphone for repair & chided him for throwing it on the floor, even when he removes it, he's gentler now. Anyway, I decided to use the random play mode & saw renewed interest. I notice during change of music, he sits up & appear to actively listen for a while before going back to playing his puzzle or eating.
As mentioned before, Dylan had a crying spree & exhibited much insecurity (often before falling asleep & right after waking up) for quite a while prior to starting his nocturne CD, but this insecurity can be traced to Daddy's being away for > a week on business trip, followed by my business trip for 3 days (7-9 Nov 07). We perceived he had some feelings of being abandoned and acted like he didn't want our attention when we just returned. Thankfully, he's over that and has gained confidence and sense of security since before we went on a holiday on 20 Dec and even more so during the 11 day vacation as he surprised us in his ability to settle to sleep easily (except the very first nite) despite our various moves to different places. He was also mostly happy, except a 2 day period during day 2 & 3 when he cried during dinner times.
His ability to focus and stay on task increased in duration. He is now able to complete various types of 24 piece puzzles (large floor puzzle as well as smaller ones from a puzzle story book), often in 3-4 minutes but he will remove a few pieces and put them back to relive the joy/ thrill of his success! Apart from Samonas & RDI (relationship development intervention), we're also doing jin shin jyutsu (or JSJ, a gentle yet very supportive healing touch /energy work) for him.
Overall, without being able to pinpoint whether it's due to the Samonas music (nocturne CD), RDI or JSJ, his confidence and regulation and level of awareness has increased quite considerably.
On 7 Jan, 08, during OT with Sheralyn, and she was counting the no. of times he's bouncing on the stormcloud, he also counted "1, 2, 3" very clearly. Another time, when I was counting the no. of pieces of puzzles we were keeping to make sure we have all, as I counted 15, 16, he said "senteen, ayteen". I was really pleased in his interest to participate and verbalise. I really hope that he would develop his keenness to communicate, esp using verbal communication.
He's also keener & more able to monitor my actions and adjust his to coordinate, & there would be occasions I need not run after him but he realise he's disconnected & come back to me. Sometimes he'll even try to keep up when I move fast & slow or back & forth. But not all then time or when there's highly distracting objects like water fountain/ waterfall when we walk etc.
While Dylan is beginning to be more interested in others, eg. smiling at & hugging his cousins & neighbours, he has quite a bit of inappropriate touching, eg. just touching strangers' hair / clothes in the bus, or tapping/drumming on neighbours tummy as he enters the lift / just sticking his hand out to touch as people come our way. Hope that he would develop a better appreciation & respect others' personal space.
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