I really miss having a behavior consultant. Justin’s in a bad phase of melting down whenever it’s time to give up the iPod or computer, plus he’s having potty accidents because he doesn’t want to leave whatever he’s doing. (It got so bad that I actually took him to the doctor to see if there was something physically wrong — but no, the problem is all in his head. Great.) The behavior consultant we used to have is too busy to work with him these days, so we’re pretty much on our own. He has always responded well to a token system, so today we introduced a new system of rewards for good behavior — he seems motivated, so I guess that’s a start. The school is aware of his issues and has their own plan of attack, so we’ll see how things go. Argh.

Justin’s current obsessions are numbers, dates and addresses. To illustrate this, I just have to share a conversation we had the other day:
JUSTIN: So then Ben said something funny.
ME: Who’s Ben?
JUSTIN: He’s a boy.
ME: How do you know him?
JUSTIN: From 473 Yates Road.
ME: (pause) You mean from school.
JUSTIN: Yeah.

The boys are both excited about Halloween tomorrow. Without any prompting from me, they decided on complementary costumes this year: Brayden will be Mario and Justin’s going as Luigi (the Nintendo characters, for those of you who live under a rock). They each get to wear their costumes to school, so I feel like I’m getting my money’s worth. All the grade ones are actually going trick or treating at a retirement home near the school — that should be interesting.

Happy Halloween everybody!