Social Skills Group & Hair
Zane goes to a “Friendship Group” twice a week. I snapped a few pictures this time. They start the day with a “circle time” sort of thing where they greet each other and ask questions like “How are you today?”, with visual supports/PEC cards to ask and answer the questions.
They usually have a craft (often done cooperatively to develop communication and cooperation skills), a game (turn sharing and, in theory, how to win/lose gracefully…although the ‘gracefully’ part has a way to go, it is MUCH improved), a “show and share” (usually a toy, but this day Zane brought the book “Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus”), and some sort of special activity.
About the hair. Zane refuses to cut his hair. He has always hated both the process of cutting hair and having short hair. In the last few months I noticed that he was starting to approximate eye contact behind the bangs, and knowing how he feels about cutting his hair it occurred to me that maybe he doesn’t like short hair because it doesn’t provide the sensory screen that long hair does. I waited until I felt like he had developed the habit of initial eye contact/visual referencing (not sustained eye contact, just letting people know he is talking to/listening to them), because I didn’t want to mess with that, but finally I couldn’t take it any more and started putting his hair into a ponytail to get it out of his face during ST. (I actually came into the room one time and pulled the holder out of my hair and put it in his when I just couldn’t take it one more minute. He was pulling his hair purposely in front of his face that day and it was causing issues, and I had made him start putting into a ponytail the week before for swimming.) From that point on, when he has either ST (because they need to see his face) or swimming (because of my own experience of coming out of the water with a wall of hair suffocating me so I know that it can be panic inducing, even with an experienced swimmer) he has to let his hair be pulled back unless he agrees to cut it. He is allowed to pull the ponytail out as soon as those things are done (and he usually does almost immediately). It is a comfortable truce for both of us.
The only down side is that boys do not have long hair in this part of the country, and you can imagine how on top of things the STs had to be to keep the comments to a minimum with a group of boys who don’t have a polite filter. lol. Right now I am just waiting for the hair to grow just a little more so the ponytail looks a little more boyish and lower on his head.
Ready to leave
