The smile says it all

We met with our therapist today. We had our baseline assessment for the Theraplay intervention. Can I say that we had an absolute ball?!!! We were instructed to go through 9 exercises; it took us about an hour. We were alone in a room with a videocamera. I nearly forgot that thing was there. The various activities included putting hats on each other, playing with puppets, playing tic-tac-toe (he won) and giving each other hand massages with lotion (that was really nice).

At one point, I was instructed to describe to my son what it was like the first time I saw him as his foster parent. He was 10 months old at the time. Poor baby. He had been living with another foster mother who kept barnyard animals in her house (??!!) and he had developed an allergic reaction (go figure). So when I saw him, he was all crusty with mucus and obviously did not feel well. That baby took one look at me and gave me the biggest nearly toothless smile and reached out towards me; I fell in love instantly. It was interesting to watch his face tonight as I described this story. When I got to the part about the smile, he gave me the identical smile again. You would have thought he'd never heard this story before; he has! He was captivated (so was I).

Anyway, there were a few other activities, and then I took him in my lap and fed him some pretzels. I was curious how he would respond to this for a couple reasons: 1) he's 7 and he's "a big boy now" and doesn't go for all that mushiness, and 2) even when I can get him to be mushy, he only tolerates it for brief intervals. This little boy crawled into my lap, initially was kinda stiff, but as we talked and I fed him, or I should say, I talked and he ate, he relaxed into me and it was almost like he was an infant again. He opened his mouth at the appropriate times and patiently waited to get the next bite. I can't wait to see what our therapist says about that.

We meet again in a couple of days to review the videotaped session. I'll keep you posted.