Men at work!

On the weekend I went into the playroom with Aditya with a "game".

When anyone says "I've got a game for you" his face lights up. (Thanks to the wonderfully exciting games he played with his friends at the Son Rise house last month.)

"What's that game?" said he.

I announced the name of the game (still in the bag but some of the things could be seen from outside) ... the "Handy Man game".

"The Handy Man Game?" said Aditya with excitement, as he is fond of things the handymen get with them when they come to fix things around the house. (Handymen are people who fix all kinds of things in the house--- they are the combination of a "plumber", a "carpenter", and an "electrician"... no wonder... it is so cool to play the Handy-Man!)

I then drew out all those cool things from the bag one by one: a not-in-use remote control which would be our cell-phone, an empty box with pictures of light bulbs, batteries of 4 different kinds, a flashlight (torch), a digital organizer which would be our laptop/palmtop computer, some wires, tape, a screw driver, a clothespin doubled up as a plyer, a stud finder, a measuring tape, and 4 plastic bags (read more for why plastic bags).

The bottom-line is... the Handy Man game was not really a game. But we have seen this time and again... when you present almost anything as a game, it becomes a hit!!!

As handy-men we did a number of things together--- most of them with Aditya in the lead role:

1) Use a TV remote control as a mobile phone to take calls from people calling us with jobs
2) Answer phone calls from Jack who lives on 123 Washington Street and Joe who lives on 321 Main Street. Jack had a broken light bulb and wanted us to fix it. Joe, had a bigger issue. His bathroom had a problem and there was water all over in his house. Aditya agreed to go to help Joe first as he needed help more urgently.
3) Visit people's houses to fix things with Aditya riding his motor bike and me riding behind him
4) Wear plastic bags in our feet to make sure we did not bring the dirt from the streets into our clients' houses!
5) Aditya using a big vacuum to suck away water while I used a baseball bat turned into a broom to clean away the excess water
6) Aditya helping me move away the trampoline (pretending it to be a dining table) as there was water under it which had to be cleaned
7) Making a call to Jack as we were getting late going to his house to fix the light bulb
8) Going to Jack's house and fixing his light bulb after measuring the hight of his lamp post then deciding he needed to raise that a little more, then standing on a step stool which Aditya helped me with, to change the light bulb

Goals worked on:
1) Inspire Aditya to physically participate in activities chosen by him and by others... this one we did very well due to the nature of this game
2) Inspire him to be spontaneous in our interactions... such as "Joe" telling him on the phone about water everywhere, and wondering aloud how soon he would come. He responded by saying one minute. As another example, I would "wonder" how we could clean up so much water, and he would then come up with a response like "Let's get the vacuum cleaner".
3) Inspire Aditya to make his wants/not wants clear. Inspire him also to make himself clearly understood, e.g. I wondered if he was okay wearing plastic bags in his feet. He said "I am okay but it is wet over there" (perhaps with sweat). I laughed and readily offered to remove those bags.

All in all, we had a gala time. It was amazing to see Aditya's willingness to participate in such a physically interactive activity for about 20 minutes at a stretch. When he was done with the game, he clearly said "I want to stop playing this and..." thus making his want clear. Hurray!!!