A rare Jayce moment!

We have been working on modeling for Jayce how to "play pretend" for a whole year now. Although its especially hard for children with autism, I think its also pretty typical for boys as young as Jayce not to play pretend as much or as well as girls the same age. At any rate, we basically have been modeling play that includes feeding a doll pretend food and putting a stuffed animal to bed. he's gotten those concepts down well. Now, he won't just spontaneously start to do those activities on his own. But if you prompt him with the doll and the food or give him the verbal instruction to put Elmo to bed, he will. And its just SOOO cute to watch :) I remember watching Jaina at 15 months old pat her baby dolls on the back, lay them on the floor, and smother them with a blanket to "put them to bed".

So, the other day when Jayce randomly and spontaneously grabbed Jaina's stuffed dog that looks like Alli, I immediately grabbed my powershot to record it. First he sat on it to "ride" it. "Yay, Jayce!" he said :)

Then he picked it up and gave it a hug and said, "Awwww!"

I prompted the kiss by asking him to do it, but the result is still the same :)