I love you more than I love cookie dough.- Melanie Hogeterp

Yes, that's right today's post starts with a quote from me. My posts are often on the importance of relationship and today I'm giving an example of how we can put that into action.

A few weeks ago I took Nathan to a birthday party for one of his classmates. the party was at a local gym where the kids get to have all kinds of fun running, jumping, and swinging. Now birthday parties are a set up for Nathan. A party is one of the situations that he has a difficult time manging himself...or I should say after a birthday party. I stayed at the party to try to minimize some of the dysregualtion that would occur within him ( and to supervise his first real physical play after having his arm out of a cast). I didn't do much interacting with him at the party but was mostly a reassuring pressence for him.

When we returned home from the party I began making the cookies that I had begun making the day before. Nathan began struggling with what to do with himself and then became angry, yelling etc. I put aside my baking and attended to him. After he was calm I really wanted to get back to my cookies. So that's what I did. Soon after Nathan was at it again, angry and out of sorts.

I suddenly dawned on me that for today Nathan needed me to put away the cookie dough and focus on him. So that's what I did. And I told him that. "Nathan, I love you more than cookie dough".

The point of this is that I love to bake and it would have been my first choice for what to do that afternoon until I remembered that Nathan is more important. It's easy to forget that isn't it? It's easy to focus on the things we do and not the people we love.

Later that evening Nathan, Kevin and I talked about the afternoon. We told Nathan that we love him more than anything he can name. Then I asked him to name something. He began looking around the room and naming objects..."A book" he said. "I love you more than a book" we replied. "The dishes" he called out. "We love you more than the dishes" we affirmed. And on it went. I know the words were good for Nathan to hear. More importantly, it was a good reminder to me. Melanie