It was NOT a beautiful day!

I will try to always write these blog entries in pairs of difficult and upbeat.  This may mean that the upbeat ones are short and cutesy, but given the daily workload, I take whatever I can get for a laugh.

Gene is put through various programs by his therapy team to help him learn the skills that he will need in life.  Right now, those skills are mostly focused on being able to function in school and learn.  One of the regular programs that lately has been happening in every session has involved a therapist reading a very short story to Gene and then verbally quizzing him on the events and descriptions of that story.  This is the simple reading comprehension that is really at the root of most schoolwork.

The other week Gene was in no mood to cooperate with his therapists.  The official policy has been to wait out his moods until Gene moves into compliance.  The theory is that once Gene realizes that nothing fun will happen until he does what he is asked, the wait time will get less and less.  I have no idea if this is working yet, but the technique has a long history of success in other children.

So Gene is refusing to cooperate with his therapists and the next item on the schedule is one of the short stories.  The therapist has been waiting an hour with no luck and the end of her shift is coming.  The therapist is also trying to train a new therapist who will be joining the team shortly.  In frustration (something I rarely see in these marvelous therapists!) this professional reads the story to Gene over his vociferous objections.  In order to demonstrate how the program is supposed to work, she begins to ask the first of the questions, expecting no cooperation out of Gene.

Gene begins yelling, "It was NOT a beautiful day.  They did NOT go fishing on the boat and they did NOT catch a big red fish!"

Yes, Gene has figured out how the program works, has figured out how the pattern of questions work and is explaining that he will not cooperate.  The therapists somehow keep from laughing out loud (I certainly couldn't!) and finish their notes for the session.