Our Son-Rise Journey

So much of what the Son-Rise program stands for is wrapped up in this statement, “possibility begins with imagination!”  If one can’t imagine something is possible, the steps would never be taken to make it so.  In life, we tend to put our “best self” out there for others to see and desperately seek their approval, hiding pieces of ourselves that we think others may deem unworthy.  In doing this we lose our authenticity.  When we put our value into the hands of others judgements and opinions, we can also begin to put less faith in our choices and what we think is possible in our lives.  It stifles imagination.

True success comes when we know we are being judged and realize that we don’t really care.  We are able to embrace who we are and trust ourselves which brings an increased openness and honesty that enhances our inner harmony.  When that happens we know we are living our lives to the fullest and are able to imagine what is possible for ourselves without allowing judgements to stifle us.  With imagination comes the possibility of reaching the previously thought unreachable!

Lucas has met so many goals in this program that prior to Son-Rise felt unreachable to me.  When I went to start-up last year to be trained, I remember them asking us at the end of the week to write down a list of goals that we wanted our children to reach in the program, a list of the “unreachables.”  I remember writing down that I wanted Lucas to say I love you.  Not just say it, but really truly mean it!!  They also asked us to write down a date that our children would reach those goals and then we broke into groups to brainstorm ideas of how to go about reaching them in the playroom.  I remember putting a really lofty timeline on this particular goal.  In the back of my head thinking, I just can’t picture this really happening.  My son wasn’t even allowing me to sit next to him at the time let alone allowing me to connect in a truly meaningful way.

When I broke into my group, all of these beautiful people that I had shared so much with in the past week, turned to me and said, “No way!, you will get that way sooner!”  They all rallied behind me and made me change it to within the next 6 months.   Lucas didn’t actually hit this goal until about a year into the program, but the belief that he could was so profound!  I began to believe anything was possible and so it became reachable and obtainable!

I have a few videos on some of us working on our current goals in the playroom.

This first one shows us working on clarity of language with Lucas.  For years….and I mean years, he posed everything he needed in a question format (the way we would ask him).  So for example if he wanted a banana, he would come up to us and say, “Do you want a banana?”

In this first video, Lucas wants the facilitator to run.  He says a myriad of sentences “I want to run, do you want me to run, etc.” None of which was what he really wanted.  He wanted her to run.   She responds by celebrating his language, responding to him literally then goes on to use explanations to help him with the appropriate language for what she thinks he is really asking (which is for her to run).   Notice how she talks to him as if he understands everything she is saying (a common misconception is that our children need to be spoken to like a baby or in broken short language).

I also need to say that Brad and I had worked on ‘I versus you’ in Luke’s language for probably close to 3 years using other modalities and have never succeeded in Lucas doing this naturally or not needing to be corrected.  I am ecstatic to say that we have met this goal within one month of approaching it in the “Son-Rise” way of doing things!  He is not only doing this in the playroom but regularly generalizing this skill out of the playroom as well.  1 month!!!  The second video shows him using, “I want Maria to run,” without the need of an explanation or correction!  I am waiting for this program to stop amazing me!  LOL.

Another goal we have just added to our playroom is the goal of inspiring Lucas to be involved in simple games with a simple structure.  A recent huge development has been that Lucas is really interested in watching us play or introduce things.  Prior to this, the play always needed to be built off of his current motivation and be mostly and purely the motivation.  If we began to try something abstract (imaginary play, etc), he would usually just go back to ismg (stimming).  However, now he is truly interested in observing us while we bring in some more abstract things into our play.  Observation is a big step toward participating!

In this video, our volunteer is really just selling the toys in the game and Lucas is observing him while he is doing it.  Our goal would be to keep introducing something like this to give Lucas time to digest and understand “the game” and then pull a motivation into the game to get Lucas interested in participating.

Ok…the last video is our facilitator bringing simple gestures into her interactions with Lucas (in this case high fives).  It is also a very sweet video of some very sweet affection from Lucas.