Harmon and Stitch!

Vintage Harmon in his first week of life w/his Stitch doll

One of my favorite movies in the world is Lilo and Stitch! My favorite part is when Stitch creates the entire city of San Francisco out of the blocks in Lilo's room and than trounces them like Godzilla (link). Stitch was always a walking contradiction: cute, fluffly, crazy, and destructive all at once. He wanted to be good but he was sort of programmed otherwise.

Today I was watching the movie and I realized that is sort of how Harmon is. He is such a good little guy but his Sensory Integration makes it hard on him at times. Just like Stitch is cute and fluffy; Harmon is truly a heartbreaker in his polite manners, charming smile, and little blonde curls. If you catch him on his harder days you see a kid with the Terrible Two's on steroids. There is no way around it between the biting, hiting, and him banging his head against the wall... he is a handful (sort of like Stitch attacking San Francisco).

I don't really ever talk about this that often on our blog because I don't want Harmon thinking he was a bad kid later when he reads this. It is just that his brain is wired to seek danger, to struggle with communication, impulse control, etc. Part of the misconceptions about kids with Sensory Integration is that they are bad apples. We suspect Chris probably had this in some form and his childhood's earliest memories are of everyone telling him how bad he was. They are good kids who need help getting the extra energy out while they learn to handle their environment.

Harmon is doing so amazing. He has very few meltdowns these days and his focus is amazing. During parent/teacher conference on Friday his teacher marveled at how well he is doing. He is not only behaving but proving to be a leader in the classroom. She also told me that he knows things that her 4 and 5 yr olds do not know (like he can identify numbers 1-9 random on paper). As his verbal continues to improve he is learning to communicate rather than just scream. He sings all day long and even will tell us stories. While he still does "normal" two yr old stuff like whine about not getting a toy or get impatient; the issues we were most worried about seem to be slowly getting much better!!!

So just like Stitch over came his "programming" our Harmon is learning to over come his. The teacher thinks he will not require any special education by the time he enters Kinder and will be ahead of his peers even. I'm sure he will always have to cope with a sensory issue here or there I don't think it will keep him from doing anything he wants in life (in fact it might help him, after all we think that this is one of the reasons Chris is so organized always and a great multi-tasker)!!! So Harmon I hope you never think you were rotten or bad, you are a wonderful exuberant child who has so much to give the world and we are so glad to have you!