An "Ah Ha" Moment

This will be a quick post because I want to get it down before I forget about it.

Ian's first day back after Spring Break was today.  Typically he has a rocky day or two before settling back down into the routine.  On his daily sheet he got a "frownie" for his keyboarding time.  He smacked the keyboard and said "Shut up."  Once I read this, I told him he would have to do some keyboarding time with me.

To try something new, I put his dry erase board/chalkboard combination next to my desk and wrote down the words, one at a time, and had him copy them.

At first he was annoyed with me and the whole thing.  I reminded him that he had misbehaved and would have to earn back his iPad time.  Things started to turn around.

Then he kept mixing up "m" and "n" but that turned around too.

I picked some words randomly, twelve total, and made him type them all.

As we got to the end, he was GETTING IT.  It's difficult to explain, but he was sounding out the letters and reading the words back and HE WAS ENGAGED.  I've been doing homework with him for a long time, and this was the first time it felt like something "clicked" and it was amazing.  Simply amazing.  I had a glimpse of the child that I know is in there.  We just have to get the noise in his brain turned down and I think he will do just great.  I think that the STX209 may be working just enough so that moments like this are possible.

My previous post was a hard one to write, and I know for some it was a little hard to read.  I was down, I was stressed about middle school transition, and it came out in that post.  But that is my world.  Those days make days like this one even sweeter.