So here's the part where you make a choice

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I had the pleasure of a stolen hour with Bean today; one of her OT appointments got moved to 10:00 Monday mornings, and I took that shift and gave up the Thursday afternoon one. So now we can drop Miss O off and hit Barnes and Noble or Rudy's and steal a snack and an hour together. This morning I got coffee, she had a cookie and we read books at B&N before heading over for her OT visit.

Her OT, besides noting how tired Bean was (and she was .. the kid just doesn't sleep well), remarked on how much she's improved. I agreed with her; the restraint Bean shows at school when she's getting roughed up by the bigger kid is remarkable in itself. But she's more reasonable and easygoing at home, too. I hate putting things in writing ... it's kinda like the old days when I'd be dumb enough to put something like "Miss O fell asleep in under 20 minutes!" in my blog, only to have the next night take two hours.

But I'll risk the jinx to brag on her for a minute: her behavior has been a lot more stable. Yes, she can still get upset about things, but the nonlinear freakouts are few and far between.

On the way to school this morning, after her OT, she and I were talking about how she has to give this kid at her school a clean slate every day, and how I know that's hard when he's not showing her any change in behavior. We talked a little about that and that he was making mean choices and she said the most amazing things to me about how she closed the door on mean choices and instead opened the door to crying, basically saying that she no longer made mean choices, but instead cried if she got upset. She said "I locked the mean choices in a cage and I won't open the door."

I was blown away by what she was saying - it was in 4.5 year old words, but the wisdom and restraint behind it seems well beyond her years, doesn't it?
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