Dylan's New Toy

"Dylan" got a new toy, but as you can see, the neighborhood gang of 2nd - 6th grade boys took it over pretty quickly. I couldn't believe how much time these boys spent engaged with a toddler's sand and water table! Hopefully Dylan felt like King of the Sand Pile as owner of the "it" toy today. What a soiree! Hopefully the gecko they recruited to captain the boat and dump truck survive the day, too.

The reason I got the toy was because I need to keep Dylan working with his hands as much as possible. He is in occupational therapy two days a week for a number of things that include muscle tone. Dylan is very resistant to playing with most manipulative toys. All he desires to do is sit on the computer or play station ALL day long (we don't have the playstation working anymore). He does like pretend play and strangely legos! You would think those would have developed his fine motor skills, but they say he uses his body too much to push them together (and I now notice he does actually use a lot of pre-built things instead of building it himself.) He also likes to play with cars and pretend games, which is great, but he needs to work on fine and gross motor skills a lot more. Here is a pic of Dylan in the midst of a fun therapy session as he swings around in his sailboat and tries to put different colored turtles on the with the color spots on the floors

Dylan is also in speech therapy so a huge hunk of my week is going to the appointments, but I would rather put the work in now while he is a little guy and hope it helps him in school and activities later. It would hurt me to look back and wish we did more and simply hope for the best. Fortunately, I really love the place we go and now just need to find the time at home to encourage him and play with his cool toys!