Pre-Birthday & PCIT Update

We celebrated Anthony's 6th birthday a few days early with his entire birth family. It went really well.

Things I learned:

1) Not telling Anthony about a special event until we are a few minutes from arriving is a great way to help avoid any subconscious sabotaging that often occurs around his birthday.

2) His manners have improved tremendously.

3) Even though he misses his little brother, his interest in playing with him is quite brief.

4) He needs to learn basic Spanish…it is important so that he can communicate with his grandparents. Now I just need to learn how to convince my husband that he should play a role in this!

5) His little brother understands and speaks less Spanish than Anthony.

6) His birth mom seems to be much more comfortable and accepting of all of our roles in Anthony's life.

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PCIT (Parent Child Interaction Therapy) has been going really well. We spend 5 minutes almost every day doing our homework AKA 'Special Play Time.' Both boys LOVE it and ask for it daily. Anthony especially cherishes this time. On Friday, our therapist collects data to assess our progress with the skills as we play with him for 5 minutes and then coaches us for the remainder of the session. It has been fun watching Lee play with Anthony and I think he feels the same when watching us:).

What I like most about the time is that it encourages such positive interactions and very strategically addresses any negative behaviors. Anthony hasn't really had any trouble so it is overall a really enjoyable interaction.

Lee and I have almost met the criteria for the Child Directed Interaction (CDI) so I am guessing that we will soon be learning about the Parent Directed Interaction (PDI) portion. It will be interesting to see what happens with that!