Making him talk / THE CLEANSE

This afternoon I took the kids back to Mom's house for a few hours. She was sending things home to the Philippines and I had given her a slew of girls' baby clothing. Again, Ronin and Audrey took off to play in the basement while Nikko hung around me upstairs, eating peaches. He caught sight of some leftover chocolate (Kit Kat and Twix) and made a beeline for it. This is where I took the opportunity to get him to say "I want candy please." Either myself or Chinny would hold up the chocolate bar and do the prompting. Nikko was furious. He didn't want to say WANT. But we both kept tryin to entice him. Mom was watching and found it painful. I totally sympathize with her outlook because it looks like I'm just being mean to Nikko. But it is very evident to any parent whose child has a speech delay or is non-verbal that if you want your kid to talk, they have to say what you want them to say, and that means holding out on a reinforcer until he says the desired word. Nikko and I battled it out for 20 minutes until he ended up saying WANT. He even had some success with Chinny doing the hold-out. But she and I were in agreement that when Nikko goes to Kindergarten, he will have to ask for things appropriately instead of expect for things to be granted to him. I felt bad that Nikko was using his high-pitched tea kettle screech, plus thrashing and throwing his head back in angst, but it also felt like a big show and I didn't want him to get away with his theatrics. Ultimately I had to calm him down from his frenzy, even speak lowly, and that helped to get a WANT out of him.

One other thing to note tonight.... by the way, ********TMI ALERT*********TMI ALERT******** I told my mom this afternoon that I was distraught about Nikko's mineral oil situation. I just don't know what the next steps would be, beyond lowering his dosage. "It's not supposed to be like this," I recall telling her, referring to his leakage and the constant diaper changes throughout the day. This evening toward the end of dinner I noticed Nikko getting up and leaving the room. When I tracked him down, he was standing next to the speaker stands in the living room, grimacing and straining and obviously having a bowel movement. When I changed his diaper, he had taken a really big dump of a peanut buttery consistency. Strangely, it didn't stink as bad as his poopy diapers have smelled all week long. After changing him, I saw in a few minutes that he didn't finish his business and so I found myself changing him again. This next diaper held another big volume of poop, and I figured out that this must be THE CLEANSE that the gastro mentioned might be backing up in him. There was one other diaper in between this change and the next that had a tiny amount of poop, but the very last diaper before bath time had another big volume of poop but was lighter in color, kind of fibrous, and iffy on the stink factor. Again, my assumption here is that Nikko finally cleaned out his bowels. But if so, then what next? That will be my question for the gastro when I call her, again, on Monday morning.