Maybe they don’t melt in your hand but…

Lately there have been some issues with little guy at school and I’ve been getting reports of roughhousing with the other boys in his class. Unfortunately this is one of those things that is to be expected in a class full of boys, most of whom have Sensory processing Disorder. If you throw into the mix that its been raining a lot and that means no playground time the rowdiness level goes through the roof. We’ve been having numerous talks with the little guy about keeping his hands to himself and how he needs to listen to the teacher and not push, pull, grab, etc. Some days I get a good report and other days I see the teacher with a look on her face that tells me she just may go home and poor herself a good, stiff drink. In an effort to increase the good days we’ve told little guy he’ll get M&M’s for behaving himself, a reward that worked wonders for getting rid of the binkies here recently.

Today I was delighted when I received a note in little guy’s backpack saying he did great today! I told little guy how proud I was and said he’d get his M& M’s right after lunch. After I handed him three M & M’s (yes, we’re pretty minimal with them) I walked into the office to grab something off the printer. I then hear him yelling “Get it out, get it out!” and run back to see two M&M’s sitting on his tray and his little finger pointing to his nose. “Did you put an M & M up your nose?!” I asked foolishly. He said; “yes”. I tried the method we used just weeks ago when he stuck a blueberry up his nose: trying to get him to shoot it out by blowing his nose real hard. This did not work at all. I ran for the tweezers. To my surprise, once I grabbed the M & M it did not just pop out as I’d anticipated. It was melted in a chocolatey, gooey mess. So I stood there pulling out small chunks of melted chocolate from my toddler’s nose. Then I looked up his nose again with the flashlight to see that there was still plenty of M & M material lodged in there. Great. I once again tried to get him to do the “shoot it out your nose” routine and he was finally able to blow out the rest of the M&M in one disgusting little lump that flew onto his tray.

In related news we are now switching to stickers as rewards.