Let's play!

I have met S's mum now and have the framework for her program. From what I heard of Nina's evaluation, she sounds very much like a normally developing 3 year old. She still throws some tantrums, but behaves better at school than at home. She is intelligent but has a few OCD like traits. Following set routes, and not having her little brother touch her things are important. She has had a hat, fixation that she seems to be on top of. I get to go in a play with her, entice her to become involved in my games, and to accept my involvement in her games. As always with ABA, I will be taking data so that we can measure her progress. On Friday afternoons we have scheduled an artificially set up playdate with my daughter. Being a little older than S, I can explain to Aurora what we are trying to achieve, so that we can contrive situations that require her to make requests and initiate conversation. The first play date is decorating cookies, and will be facilitated by Nina. I hope I can think of a few things that will excite both girls so that S will look forward to the dates and get some positive reinforcement from her efforts to socialize, and then hopefully, S's motivation will be high enough for me to bounce off. I am not meant to involve myself too much in the playdates if possible though. I am going to try not to overthink this over the next couple of days, and wait till Tuesday when I meet S herself and try to build some rapport. I will inevitably read up on a few ideas though. I think I should just go and play with my niece Ava, for a little while and remind myself how much she loves playing with me. I can remember as a child wanting to play with people, but not always understanding what I had to do to fit in properly. Hopefully I know enough of the rules by now. I watched "4 holidays" the other night. A movie with Reese Witherspoon. It was funnyish... but I was more depressed by the reminder of how mean kids can be. The school yard is a hard world for an introvert to navigate. Hearing Nina's anecdotes during the meeting, I felt that she was more introverted than I first realised. She mentioned bringing books to read during her kids sporting events, so that she didn't have to sit in the mum's club. I have done that. Time to go practice my pretend skills.