Pretend Play

James has been doing more pretend play recently.

For example, James has a Scooby-doo ghost catcher set, complete with Shaggy, Scooby, and ghost action figures. Yesterday he jabbed quite a bit about who was driving the Mystery Mobile. He gets a little scared when I pretend that a ghost is coming. When I ask him to catch the ghost, he tells me to do it and stops playing until I've locked the ghosts up.

He usually likes to pretend that one of the action figures is driving. He still prefers to manipulate the objects and gives narratives about what they are doing rather than speaking for them or pretending to be one of them. They often go to places he has been, sometimes taking actual routes that he has memorized. Still, he talks about what they are doing in a creative context, which is good. He also made the keen observation that "It's [Shaggy and Scooby are] like Wallace and Grommit."

Unfortunately, this morning I found that he had torn the doors off the van. We have boxes full of broken toy cars. I've shown him how to use transparent tape, glue, and construction paper to symbolically "fix" or customize his toy vehicles, so it's not a total loss.

I Got Smacked

This page received a nice 4 out of 5 smacks from I Talk Too Much.

The Dentist

Back in November I took James to the dentist because his first two permanent teeth were coming in behind his baby teeth, like a shark's.

Our first trip to the dentist did not work out. When the assistant came up, she took James by the hand, and as I followed, she said parents were not allowed to go in back. James said "Dad!" and looked at me nervously. I had a funny feeling about the whole thing, so we didn't go through with it. I think I bent their clipboard.

I found a more reasonable pediatric dentist who was willing to work with special needs. I marked the appointment date on the calendar, but James crossed it out, hoping that I would forget. I didn't. James was calm when we walked into the dentist's office. The assistant that walked us into the room was polite and even a bit attractive, but there was something unsettling about her. She sounded as if her mouth was wired partially shut, and her teeth were long and shiny. Too big, too porcelain, too surreal. I think I stared.

The dentist was friendly enough. He asked James to sit on the chair, but James refused. I had to pick him up and hold him down for about 30 seconds while the dentist looked him over. James cried, screamed, and squirmed the entire time. The dentist calmly remarked on how perfect and clean the rest of James's teeth were. (James refuses to brush.) He said that the teeth didn't look like they were going anywhere and needed to be removed. Since strapping him down for a bit just to extract two teeth might be traumatic for James, he did give me the option to have his baby teeth removed in a hospital while he was asleep. Although the procedure was more costly and would require a two month wait, I opted to do that instead.

While waiting for the next appointment I decided to check James's teeth again as he slept. After messing around a bit, I realized that his teeth were loose in a certain direction. James didn't stay still enough for the dentist to realize this. Over the next couple of weeks I wiggled his teeth at night, being careful to not wake him. Eventually his teeth fell out at school. No one noticed. When I asked James if he had swallowed them, he touched his mouth and said "no" nervously, so I'm not sure if he knows when they fell out.

Glad that's over. Two down, 28 to 32 left to go.