A Dramatic Change

Over the past month, I have dreaded getting out of bed daily. The main reason for this is having to deal with Noah all day. Now, I know this sounds horrible, but his behavior has been horrible lately. All he does all day long is throw things over the banister and at people, as well as try to hit. He gets disciplined (such as time-outs and spankings), but he didn't care. My floor downstairs was covered in junk from all over the house, because it wasn't just Noah's stuff that he was throwing--it was whatever he could get his hands on. A lot of people would suggest taking the stuff away that he throws, but when it's Katie's stuff or Aidan's stuff, I can't do that. And I repeat, Noah would get punished, but it didn't phase him a bit.

On Sunday, Chris decided to completely clean the house. He knows I haven't been feeling great all month, so he figured he would help out. In the process, he took the trains off of Noah's train table and replaced them with his Disney Cars instead. He cleaned up all of the junk that was littering the floor downstairs and put everything away. When we went to Noah's room, he was happily playing with his cars. In fact, he let us play with him. On Monday, his behavior was different immediately. He kept pulling me into his room to play with him, and he threw only a couple of things. He was content almost all day.

Today was the big surprise. Once again, Noah was content when he got up this morning. He ate his breakfast and asked for seconds, which surprised me. We got dressed and played some, then went to the post office and dry cleaners. Today was speech therapy, so when Trip showed up, Noah decided to get right to work. Trip pulled out the Mr. Potato Head to go over body parts, and Noah quickly repeated each one. Then, Trip took out the picture cards and told Noah he was going to give him some new words today, the hardest words he has. Included in the words were nun, noon, pop, toot, tune, nine, etc. Noah easily repeated all of the words, with the exception of four. After that, Trip showed Noah some verbs and had him identify each action. Noah got all but one of them. We were beyond impressed. It just proves, once again, what we've thought--Noah knows his words, but for some reason, doesn't feel the need to use them.

We made it through the day without one item getting thrown or going to time out. He ate his breakfast and lunch well, and even said "More, please" when he gave me his sippy cup, asking for more milk. He has turned into an incredibly sweet, fun boy who is actually communicating with us. It really makes me wonder if he was feeling "neglected" before and was simply acting out as his way of communicating his needs. I hope we're in for much more of this behavior!