In Which Connor Is A Very Good Actor

Connor had physical and occupational therapy today, after about a week of doing next to nothing because of the eight bazillion (only a slight exaggeration) seizures triggered by his illness.  So despite acting like he was perfectly fine right up until the second we got into the therapy play room, the second we crossed the threshold of the doorway he suddenly became The Most Tired Boy The World Has Ever Known. 

Connor likes to pull out his TMTBTWHEK (how's that for an acronym?) act whenever he really doesn't want to do something.  Basically he pretends like he's falling asleep that very second.  If we don't fall for it and let him stop doing whatever evil activity we've dreamed up, then he starts cycling through his signs.  "Want eat!" he'll say.  "Potty!  Tired!  Sad!" Anything that might possibly get him out of doing what we're making him do.  As a last resort he'll ask for a long series of Love Butts (a gentle head butt-- his version of a kiss) or he'll act extra adorable and try to snuggle.  If nothing works he'll usually heave a giant sigh and resign himself to the activity, since evidently he's not going to manage to get out of it.

I suspect that Connor has learned how to work the system.  His therapists have known him for a while and are well aware of his capabilities so he doesn't try his tricks out on them often, but I've seen him convince newcomers that he is utterly unable to voluntarily touch and/or interact with anything.  That way they'll do it for him, which he prefers.  I do my very best to resist his wily ways even when he's at his very cutest because of course he needs to learn how to be as independent as possible.  Sometimes, though, like when he's getting over an illness, it's hard to tell just how much of it is fake and when he really is tired and not feeling great.  In that case I tend to error on the side of caution.

So we dragged him through his hour of physical therapy.  He spent the last ten minutes or so of it pretending to sleep on my lap.  You could tell it was fake sleeping because every once in a while he'd crack open his eyes and see if I was paying attention to him.  If I started talking to him then he'd close them again really quickly.  Occupational therapy never really got off the ground because he simply refused to do anything at all.  Still, he'd been perpetuating this behavior way longer than he normally does, and he had been sick the week before so there was certainly a chance he wasn't faking it.  We gave up after about twenty minutes and I took him home, convinced that he really was tired and would no doubt crash once I put him down for a nap.

As soon as we got home suddenly my child was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.  Nap?  What nap?  Here it is almost 11:00 at night and the kid is still awake.  He definitely pulled a fast one on me.

Oh well.

~Jess