Ben:1, Dad:0

Benjamin’s therapy sessions don’t always go as planned. Sometimes Ben doesn’t like what’s going on so he tries to sleep to escape it, which means we have to try something new to keep his attention. His therapists aren’t big softies like Dad, though, he doesn’t get away with much with them. But sometimes he’s already asleep when his therapists get here. This is due to Dad’s lack of a meaningful schedule for him. It’s always interesting to see which technique works to wake him up each time.

Last week Ben had Physical Therapy and Occupational Therapy back to back. That’s a lot of work for one little guy. And it was also probably my fault. Ten minutes or so into OT Ben decided it was nap time. So we tried lots of different things that didn’t work. That’s when I brought out the big guns: the black beans. Yes, we’ve been using dried beans and rice as sensory therapy lately, but even that didn’t work.

Usually it’s the grabbing of his arm that bothers him the most, but he generally likes the beans a lot less than the rice. And yes, that means that one of my strategies to wake him up was to annoy him. Tell me you haven’t done it. Besides, it didn’t work. We continued trying different things and he eventually woke up when he was good and ready.