Amazing improvement
For about a week now, Zoë's behavior has been remarkably good. It's really quite shocking how well-behaved she is. I'm extremely pleased and very relieved.
I'm not sure what has caused this positive change. I think it may be several things. First, I suspect maybe it's just a postive growth thing. She frequently has periods of extreme irritability and difficult behavior right before a new developmental stage, so that might have been part of her bad behavior and now the good.
We're also trying a new nutritional supplement that has been reported to have very good effects on all sorts of people, including autistics.
Finally, we cut out a particular preservative that is common in bread and wheat products. The additive is 282 and it's got all kinds of bad side effects, including behavior difficulties in children. We found that there are several brands of commercial bread that don't have it, and that most cereals don't, either.
I suspect that the improvement is a combination of things, but given the timelines involved and other factors, I do think the bread preservative is probably the major factor at this time.
Whatever it is, all I can say is that I'm thrilled with the improvement in her demeanor and behavior. I had started to worry that she was getting worse. It's a real relief to find out that she is, in fact, getting better.
No! Not Nanna!
I invited Nanna to come to Early Intervention to see some of what we do there. Since Nanna had a lunch appointment afterward, she took a different car and just followed. When we arrived, Zoë saw Nanna and said, "Bye!" and was clearly very distressed that Nanna was present, something I didn't anticipate.
Zoë has difficult with context switches. Things like songs that are performed at preschool shouldn't be sung elsewhere, and then there's the case of Evil Fantasia, which is the original Fantasia movie. She got used to viewing Fantasia 2000 and liked it, and then we put on the original for her. She was a bit distressed, but not too badly, until it got to "The Sorceror's Apprentice," the only shared sequence. When that came on, she went ballistic and from then on she wouldn't even look at the cover of Fantasia because it upset her so much.
Anyway, Nanna didn't belong at playgroup, and Zoë pushed her and told her, "Bye bye!" a few times. Nanna finally took to walking some distance behind us so that Zoë didn't see her.
Well, to make a long story a bit shorter, Zoë was extremely upset. Nanna sat down quietly in a corner and we managed to get Zoë settled by having her play with one of her favorite and most involving toys, and then, slowly, Zoë adjusted. She eventually seemed to work out that she could just plain ignore Nanna, and that seemed to work fine. By the end of the session, she was doing pretty well with it.
Slowly, Zoë is learning to manage herself. I must say, it's something of a relief. I was beginning to worry she was never going to get better, and for a while it seemed that her behavior was actually getting worse...
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