Episode 2 - Jack's Story Part 2
The conclusion of Jack's Story goes in-depth with his mother as she provides insight into the personal struggles and parenting issues they ran into. Watch part 2 of Jack's Story in Episode 2 of Exceptional Family TV's first season.
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Delores, that is a great question!! And perfectly timed for my answer, because my son potty trained at the age your son is now: six! I had purchased a sliew of books on the topic and tried all kinds of recommendations offered by the behavioral therapists and the OT folks at Memorial Hospital. None of it worked. What finally worked for me was treating my son like a puppy. :D In case you've never done this, paper training a puppy involves putting the pup in a room that is covered, wall-to-wall, with newspapers. Every day you remove a paper one by one, and when there is finally only one newspaper left, that's the only area where the puppy will do his business. Well, my son liked to play computer games. At 6, he was still standing at his desk using the mouse, rather than sitting in a chair. So I took off his pants and diaper and left him at his desk to have fun. Every 15 minutes or so, I'd bring in a beverage for him. But the other thing I did was put a large metal bowl under his desk. :D The first time he peed into the bowl he was surprised and intrigued by the sound it made. By the third time, he was really enjoying it. Each time I found the bowl full, I walked it to the toilet with a happy whistle, making sure he noticed where it was going. I flushed with a jolly, "Bye pee-pee," and brought the bowl back to Jack for a refill. LOL. We did this for 2 hours or so a day. After a couple of days, I moved the bowl out from under his desk and just to the side of where Jack was standing. When he turned to face it, he was looking towards the bathroom. The next day I moved it a couple of feet towards the bathroom. The following day I moved it a bit further. Like a puppy, he followed that bowl day after day until it was right in front of the potty, and finally set on top of the potty. The last day, I tipped it sideways and slipped it between the wall and the potty -- just so Jack would see it and know he could stop looking. And just as I had hoped,. he didn't pick the bowl up and put it on top of the potty, he just stood there and peed into the potty itself. And that was it. He never peed anywhere else again. This took about 8 days in total, and I did have to have the carpet cleaned afterwards. :D But it was WORTH IT!! Good luck to you, Delores! Let me know if you try this bowl trick and if it works for you and your son.
Hello my name is Delores and I do have a 5yr. old that has Autism as well as a 6yr. old who has ADHD. My question to you is how did you get Jack to pottie train. I have tried everything and all he, Jaykeyveus, does is sit there. Once I caught him sitting on the toliet with soap taking a bath. LOL! You can imagine what that looked like. I noticed alot of things in the video of Jack that my son also do. I totally agree with you when it comes to entertaining them we will do some crazy looking things. I hope that everything will work out for you all and I hope to hear from you soon about the pottie training thing.
Thank you for sharing your story about Jack. What kind of video camera is Jack using? My son is diagnosed PDD-NOS and loves using iMovie on his laptop. He would love a handy little camera like that! It is really unfortunate that Jack cannot use the video camera at school. I think so many schools don'it get it when it comes to using technology for our kiddos. Thank you - Jack is an amazing kiddo and you are an amazing Mom!
Thank you so much for your kind words, Pixelmamoe! I got Jack this camera last Christmas and it was a cheap Panasonic jobber. I wasn't sure how he'd take to it, so I shopped by price. :) I can check the actual model if you like. He's using it so continuously that he was really burning up the batteries. I'm not kidding. I'd have to change them once or twice a day!!! Kaching!! So I got rechargeables, and life has been much calmer and less costly since. When Jack's not using his camcorder, he's using his cell phone to take video. That thing has worked so well for him, that I finally got him a new phone WITH SERVICE in order to take advantage of Verizon's GPS tracking service in case he ever got lost or abducted. (It's awesome, and I would recommend it to anyone with a family member suffering from a cognitive or language delay.) In addtion, Jack has recently taken to making calls on his cell phone. This is a huge step forward. Phone conversations force him to converse with no visual cues to assist him in processing what he is hearing!!!! I always believed someone was not fluent in a foreign language until they could use it over the phone. Well Jack is slowly becoming fluent in English. How cool is that?!
Wonderful video! I greatly appreciate the honesty with regards to life with a special needs child. This hit close to home, which is good. It helps us not feel so alone and isolated. The T-shirt is a wonderful idea and I love how you give the public credit for not wanting to be rude. I think you are so right!
Blessings dear fellow parent!
Nancy
It's true, Nancy! People really don't want to be the bad guys in these encounters, and when they realize they are picking on a disabled child, they are universally mortified. Mortified! And there have been times when I probably wasn't very kind with them. We have so many additional burdens and hassles added to our everyday outings, that these run-ins with the public — as they go about their seemingly sunny, care-free day — can seem downright unfair. And I know I have been primed to overreact on occassion. But you feel like you have to put on boxing gloves just to go to the grocery store: Back on, give us room, special needs family coming through, oh quit staring and go get yourself a fresh carton of eggs. LOL. The T-shirt changed every stranger out there from a potential "hostile" to a friend and assistant. If I found my boy running in one direction in the parking lot and my cart with my toddler, purse and groceries rolling away in the other direction, strangers would come from nowhere to help. "Go get Jack," they'd shout as they'd run after my cart-bound daughter. And as I look back on the darker days that followed Jack's diagnosis while we were struggling to find balance in our lives and a way to move forward, if there was one thing that really turned our daily lives around, the T-shirt was it. I wish I had figured it out years earlier.
I knew I would love these videos when EF was announced, and I do! Thanks for the first two videos, and thanks to Jack's family for sharing their story. I'm looking forward to more!
Joy, thank you so much for sharing the truths of raising an exceptional child! Your honesty was so comforting. Sometimes I think I'm the only with these feelings and struggles. WOW!! I'm not alone! And that is what Exceptional Family TV is all about! Thank you for sharing! Great job team eFamily!!
Thank you, Tara! I was actually a little nervous about viewing this episode (nervous grin). Gloria, Jack's tutor, complimented me after the taping, saying, "Wow. You were really candid." And I was thinking, "Uh oh. What did I say? Was I rude? Did I sound whiney and vindictive?" LOL big time! So either I have more poise and class than I give myself credit for, or the EFTV boys deserve some huge editorial kudos! I suspect it's the later! :)
Great part II of Jack's Story, keep em coming!