Oral fixations

Zhenya's behavior has improved greatly over the past few days. He has only lost one clothespin each day and for minor issues. I love routine and I know my boys do too!

However, today I got a phone call from Dima's teacher. Sigh. He actually wasn't exactly in trouble (although I think he should have been). She had noticed him chewing on something, and when she asked him to open his mouth she saw something which he quickly swallowed. He refused to tell her what it was, although he told her it wasn't gum and it wasn't candy. She was just concerned because she didn't know what it was and she was afraid he would get sick.

Fast forward to home. I sit down and have a talk with Dima about the "something-in-your-mouth" episode at school. Talks like this are always a challenge, because his expressive skills are so limited that he may actually not be able to tell me what he put in his mouth (because he doesn't actually know the word for whatever it was). I asked a lot of yes/no questions, partly to try and figure out what had happened and also to help give him some words he might have been lacking. No luck. So he had to go sit in his room until he was ready to tell me what he had put in his mouth.

I went into his room a couple of times to see if he was ready to 'fess up and he finally caved. ;) He said he had gotten something "sticky" off of Ms. B's desk. Want to know what it was? Sticky tack. Sigh. My son ate sticky tack yesterday. This was absolutely no surprise to me, as pretty much whatever is in Dima's hands ends up in his mouth. He doesn't usually actually chew on things, just sticks them there (like the end of his pencil when he's working on homework). We had an extensive discussion about not putting things in his mouth that are not food, particularly because they can make you sick (I made sure to throw in a reference to the throwing-up incident in Colorado to remind him of what happens when your stomach gets sick!). I know why it happened--they had indoor recess in their classroom yesterday, which they've never done before, and the chaos and confusion was more than the boy could take. Chewing his fingernails (or whatever else happens to be in his mouth) is his self-comfort. Still, we can't have him eating sticky tack.

I also spent a very long time on the phone with a speech therapist at Children's Hospital. We've scheduled a brief speech eval (yes, another one) for insurance purposes next week. Hopefully as soon as that is done we can get him started on some therapy!