Reducing frustration, 1 ball at a time

When we adopted our son 2 1/2 years ago, at 2 years of age, he struggled with almost everthing and many of our friends and family thought of him as difficlut to love.  With severe sensory issues, autism, epilepsy and a chromosome deletion everything in his life triggered screaming, raging and head banging.  Our sons abilities were extremely delayed, he wasn't walking or standing, could only sit when propped up, he could not speak and his feeding was similar to a 6 month old.  Existing took major amounts of energy and he slept the majority of the days and nights only waking for nourishment and a limited amount of interaction before the screaming, raging and head banging returned and the need for more sleep.

This little boy only had one thing that made him the slightest bit happy, so we knew that we had to work with this interest if we ever hoped to have a happy boy.  The slightest bit happy meant he wasn't screaming, raging or banging his head for a couple minutes while we tried to interact with him.  We needed to meet our son where he was at, and progress from there.  He was able to hold a ball and enjoyed watching us play with a ball.  We would have mutliple very short sessions throughout the day playing with a ball building slowly and steadily on skills and language.

Speech increased as we described everything, starting with single words, and increasing the number of words.  Ball, roll, throw, roll the ball, etc.  We used "picture cards" and "sign language" while verbally speaking hoping to make a connection.

Strength and coordination increased as he went from holding a ball, to moving to reach for the ball, to rolling, throwing, catching and kicking the ball.

We varied the balls, shapes, sizes, weights, textures and colors which built on the strength, coordination and topics for speech.  We encouraged him to play with siblings and pets,  with the balls.  When we attended therapies we had already started developing a pathway for the therapists to reach our son which they were able to work from.

From starting with a simple ball 2 1/2 years ago he is now able to play with many other toys and work through his therapy sessions working on a variety of skills.  He is still substantially delayed but he is making huge progress from the little boy that spent the day screaming, raging and head banging.
We will still resort back to that ball whenever we are working on a particularly difficult skill.  Most recenty we took 2 soccer balls to the playground hoping to work on social skills with peers.  Today there were 3 other young children and when they saw us coming with 2 balls they came over (with their adults) wanting to play.  All the adults encouraged the children to take turns and they all enjoyed playing together.  Having 2 balls made it easier so each child had more turns so nobody lost interest too quickly and if our son decided not to have anything to do with sharing at least the other children could use the 2nd ball.

All the hard work from therapists and family, that started with a simple ball, is paying off.  People regularly comment on what a happy little boy he is and the head banging, raging and screaming has dramatically decreased.   Finding that interest to build on took time but was well worth the effort and throughout his life I believe we will be looking for more interests to build on as we develop more skills.