Rewards

Gavin has been developing so much in the last few months. I need to write down some of the things he is doing and saying, because it really is a fun stage. Gavin has always loved the alphabet and learned it at an early age. He has known all the sounds for sometime as well, but a month or so ago he finally made the connection that letters make words. He started shouting out B is for Ball or T is for tiger. He would do this all day every day. It has been fun to seem him taking that next step closer to reading.

He loves pretending. Lately, he has liked pretending he is some type of animal or bird. Usually, it is a tiger. When he is in character he talks about himself in 3rd person,such as "Gavin the tiger is eating." In music class the other day, he was Gavin the Parrot and he squawked through most of class. He is using his toys to create new places and worlds. Eli is in the destroying phase, so Gavin creates, and Eli destroys. There is a lot of fighting.

He also has "favorites" now. Ever since Halloween his favorite color is orange.

Gavin struggles with some things as well. He doesn't like to do things for himself. He wants mommy to do tasks for him when he is perfectly capable. So, we decided to do his first rewards chart. He helped to create it himself. It was very simple. It had a start and a finish with a "sidewalk" made of big dots in between. He got a star whenever he got dressed or undressed by himself, cleaned up his toys, put the silverware away, and whatever else he did by himself.
Our other incentive to doing the rewards chart is that we wanted to give him his own guitar since he has been wanting one. We didn't want to wait until Christmas, but we also didn't want to just give it to him. He worked really hard and after about 3 weeks, he earned is surprise. He was so excited. He didn't want to put it down for several days. When Jane came over he sat up on the ottoman taking request. It has been fun for all of us.