patching update

Tomorrow marks a week since we started patching. We are starting at just 15 minutes a day. The first day was amazing. We got the patches in the mail along with some charts to track progress. Calvin was so excited about it all that he wore his patch for 15 minutes right away and then hung his patch on the chart! He wanted to do it again so he did another 15 minutes and then hung his second patch up on the chart.

While he was patching we played a couple of games to pass the time. Lexey was so proud of him and gave him hugs and cheered him on. Clare was also involved in helping encourage Calvin (she is always a great cheerleader!)  Calvin was proud of himself too.

Day 2 was crazy. Calvin came home and put on the patch and looked around realizing that he couldn't see much with it on. (I guess the adrenaline high of the first day diminished his concern for this problem). He took the patch off and threw it down and took out his contact and tore it up. AHHH Since I think of life in $$$ sometimes this really freaks me out. bye bye $40 in 30 seconds flat. Calvin never escalated into full fit but had a very terrible day. I think a lot of it came from him being upset with himself for not being able to do what he hoped he would do.

The next day he had a rough day again, though not as severe.  Dave and I talked about it and wondered if we should give up. Calvin has made such good progress with his behavior lately it was getting scary to see him starting to really fall apart.

By day 4 Calvin was back in action and ready to do his best. Bless his heart. He wore his patch in the car for 15 minutes on our way to gymnastics and then again for 15 minutes on the way home to make up for one of the days that he missed.

He has done well the rest of this week.

There is such a difference this time around in working with him. Rather than telling him he has to wear the patch I leave it up to him to do it and work toward his goal. I am not sure a 3 year old could have really understood or been able to reason out the importance of patching so who knows if we could have done it another way when we patched all those years before.

I am proud of Calvin for his effort. He is doing his best.