Playdate progress

Up until now, we have been doing all our playdates at home.  This is where we were told to start, because it is where Thomas is most comfortable. 

We got invited to a playdate at a classmate’s house this past week.  After some discussion, he decided that he was ready to go to someone else's house.  I was nervous for him, but he did pretty well there.  He walked confidently up to the house, said hi and played rather nicely.  They had a lot of trains, so that helped.  We are going to try having some more playdates at others houses now.

Birthday parties...UGH!

Birthday parties continue to be so hard for Thomas.  It is such a disastrous combination for him- a bunch of people he doesn't know well, loud noise, a lot of people asking him questions and usually movement games/activities that are extremely difficult for him.  All this leads to a complete shut down and often angry outbursts toward me. 

We had a birthday party for a cousin that did not go very well this weekend.  We got there early and talked about who was going to be there in advance, but he was very upset there.  They had a lady come and do a music program.  We knew this was going to happen and talked about it with him ahead of time.  We told him he didn’t have to do it, but when we tried to get him to sit on our lap off to the side of the group, he had what I can only describe as a panic attack.  He had to go all the way to the other side of the house.  This was very hard because I also had the baby who was very interested in the program.  The entire day was a big frustrating struggle. 

He also just got invited to 2 more birthday parties.  I am at a loss as to what to do, because he already went to one and couldn’t handle it, so he is saying he doesn’t want to go to these.  We are getting invited to more and more things and I am starting to feel like Thomas is beginning to miss out on a lot.  It is so hard as a mom to watch all the other kids having fun while my son is so scared and upset. I hate that he has to suffer like this, but it gives me all the more motivation to keep going with being his advocate and keeping up with our CBT.