Today we had Muno from Autism NZ come around and film James doing some stuff with Mr tato. He got bored pretty fast and stopped but we got some footage. She talked about the course next week, she will be the facilitator.
I dropped the Autism books we borrowed from IHC back and got to see their library. Very impressive, loads of books so I borrowed two more, epic tomes of a technical nature. The sort you'd never buy but are good to read some of. I plan to read pretty much every book they have there, it is a fantastic resource.

when I got home James seemed lethargic and bored. I felt possessed of some sort of energy and felt like rarking things up so we three (me, James, Hannah) did a lot of mucking around with the Swiss ball; bouncing, rolling, squashing him, chucking the ball, dropping it on him, then after tea got into Hannah s old Fantacolour mosaic board. It's a plastic board and you stick different coloured mushroom shaped little domes with sticks into it to make patterns and shapes. I just got down with James and did the 'Floortime' thing and it worked really well, I was very very pleased. I got James doing lines, I just worked in with him and beside him and did some lines and talked lots about the colours. Interestlingly of the four colours, red, blue, yellow and green he was only interested in green and in his own words 'purple' (blue).
I encouraged him to make lines by showing him some line making and also joining some of his up. Every time he did one in sequence I would say 'good boy' very enthusiastically and rub his back. He did seem to respond and became a bit more interested in doing lines instead of just random stuff. I also showed him turning it over and popping them out from the back while saying 'pop'.
Sometimes he would jump up and jump around a bit. I must have spent 30-40 minutes on the floor with him.
Anyway it felt really good to guide him to do something and to see him be pleased, and also to note that he seems to be encouraged by the praise. It's not immediate but it does seem to work. Like many things with James it's slow.