Tate's iPad, Both a Blessing and a Curse

My son Tate is 13 years old. Tate has autism. When Tate was about nine years old my husband brought home our first ipad and our life was forever changed, in some ways for the better and in other ways…. not so much. That first ipad was something the whole family enjoyed and used. It is a mystery to me that Tate knew how to use it from day one. There was no learning curve or need to give him any instruction. I, the grown up, had no idea how to do anything with it, including turning it on. Yet Tate could take pictures and videos, get online, draw pictures, watch movies, and all kinds of amazing things from the beginning. Time with the ipad was coveted and the kids fought for their turn. About the same time we got our first ipad, those wonderful tablets began showing up in our children’s classrooms so Tate had the opportunity to use an ipad there occasionally. It was used both as a teaching tool and as a reward very successfully. Tate had been struggling to master two-digit addition for quite some time and he was making no progress. The day Tate’s paraprofessional pulled up a chalkboard on the ipad, and they wrote with their fingers on the ipad instead of using pencil and paper, was the day Tate caught on to double digit addition and regrouping. Math lessons were suddenly very interesting to Tate and he became motivated to learn. There were some great apps available for the ipad too. There were math games, spelling and vocabulary games, and even social skills lessons available. I loved that he was learning so much on the iPad!

Tate's ipad

So naturally, we bought Tate his own ipad. More time with the iPad could only result in more learning, right? After all, it is the going thing in the autism community now. Kids with autism need an ipad. The big drawback for us was how attached Tate got to it. If you know much about autism then you know that kids with autism often become attached to favorite objects or they can become obsessed with certain items or activities. Tate had to have his ipad under his arm at all times. He needed it right next to him every minute of the day; and at night… he slept with it. He lost sleep because he never wanted to turn it off. Taking it away from him meant he’d lose even more sleep due to anxiety and then be anxious and angry the next day too. Then there was the charger. Tate became obsessed with the charger. If the ipad charge fell much below one hundred percent then Tate insisted it was “low on battery” and needed to be plugged in. The charger and the iPad controlled Tate's anxiety and Tate's anxiety controls our home much of the time. 

And then... something even more detrimental ensued. Tate learned there were other kinds of games. You know, really fun games, the non-educational kind. Once Tate discovered those games, the educational games were no longer appreciated. And next came you-tube videos and the educational value of the ipad hit rock bottom.

But there is more. About a year after we got Tate his own iPad, I got a phone call from my credit card company. This experience is something we now refer to as the iTunes fiasco. You know those games that Tate had fallen in love with? The non-educational ones? I carefully monitored them, making sure they contained no foul language, were not violent, appropriate for his level of understanding, and above all else FREE for downloading. If I approved the game then I’d let him type in the iTunes password and download a new game quite often. Tate could not easily memorize his spelling words but he remembered that password, the placing of capital and lowercase letters, numbers, and all. It never occurred to me that my sweet and innocent ten-year old son would turn to a life of crime: identity theft. (Ha!) The customer service representative from Visa reported that they had seen some “unusual activity” on my account and they wanted to review some charges with me over the phone. Someone (guess who) had tried to purchase a game for $53.64 and Visa had denied it. In going over my credit card charges with me though, we discovered they had allowed dozens of smaller charges to be accumulated. Those charges added up to over $100.00. Tate has some savvy computer skills but is completely clueless in many areas. He does not understand the value of money. In Tate’s mind a one dollar bill or a one hundred dollar bill just mean he can buy a package of m&ms. And if you want money you just pull up to a bank and ask for it in the drive thru. So explaining credit cards to Tate would be like trying to explain how electricity works to someone like me…. You could try but it is not going to be possible. It was an expensive lesson but one I needed to learn I suppose. I had a talk with Tate about the password on iTunes. I explained that he could not use it without permission and all of those sorts of things. I thought he understood. He really seemed to understand and I think he did. Maybe. Sort of. He did not buy any additional games. He knew he did not have permission unless he asked and I okayed it. But did you know that some free games offer purchases within the game for things like adding more time to a mission or buying more accessories for your little avatars to use? Well, I did not and I certainly had not forbidden him from buying more time in a game or cute little decorations. He had no idea the money he was spending was not part of the game anyway. And although I felt like I was monitoring his games and spending an appropriate amount of time checking up on him and his iPad use, I did not really have a clue how things worked within those games. I had no idea that some games limit time and if you want to purchase more time then you can buy it: One. Dollar. At. A. Time. Tate did this over a three-day period: One. Thousand. Times. And I had no idea he was not just spending pretend money from the game to purchase things. 

Did you know there is a three-day delay sometimes between making an iTunes charge and you getting an email alert? Did you know that it sometimes takes three days for a charge to appear on your credit card?  By the time I got the call and all the alerts started pinging me. I was over twelve hundred dollars in debt to Visa for iTunes charges. My credit card company told me that I would be responsible for every single dollar and they would make no exception. I thought I was stuck. I called iTunes. It is hard to find but there is a phone number for iTunes. I explained my dilemma to the nice young man on the other end of the line and he ran off to find a supervisor. It seems I was not the first mother from the autism community they had ever heard from. They backed every single charge off my credit card but it had to be done one transaction at a time while I was on the phone line. Keep in mind most of those charges were for $1.00. It was a very long phone call and a very long evening. Before we hung up the phone, that nice young man walked me through rigging Tate’s ipad so he could no longer make “in app” purchases. This was a very good thing because the young man’s supervisor had warned me that they would not forgive charges like this a second time. In the future we would be responsible for those. For even doing this for us once, I would have hugged that guy right through the phone if I could have.

You think that is the happy ending to the story? Think again. We changed our iTunes password to make sure that there would not be an issue again. Not knowing the password stressed Tate for six months. SIX MONTHS! And stressed is not a strong enough word. It did not just upset him a little bit. It ruled his days and nights for six months. Six whole months. He talked about it constantly. He complained about it. He asked about it. He tried to guess it. He asked other people to ask me for it. He tried to trick me into giving it to him. He prayed about it in our bedtime prayers. He begged me for it. He lost sleep over it. No amount of explaining, talking, or even consoling Tate helped. It took about six months before he could come to terms with the fact that he would no longer know the password for iTunes.

Yes, he even uses it upside down

So, this is why I see Tate's iPad as both a blessing and a curse. We can’t live without it at this point. Oh we could survive but that six month spell of anxiety over the password would look like a walk in the park compared to losing the iPad. I recently suggested to Tate that he will someday need a new iPad because all his memory is used up on this one. He cannot find anything at all he wants to delete to free up some memory either. His battery is shot, probably from being plugged in sixteen hours a day while he obsesses about keeping the charge up. When I made the suggestion that we think about a new iPad, Tate went into panic mode. He does NOT want a new iPad even if it means he could have two. Honestly, if I could roll back the clock I’m not sure if we would have gotten Tate his own iPad. There are huge benefits, yes, but there are so many drawbacks. Before the messages start pouring in giving me all kinds of advice about how to limit Tate’s time with the iPad, I seriously doubt you have any ideas we have not tried. We’ve been there and done that. This ain’t our first rodeo. (Insert any other cliché you want to add here.) We have taken things away from Tate before. Read about his Blue’s Clues notebook phase: Unusual Attachments Of course if the battle (scratch that- I mean war) were worth fighting then we would fight it and not back down. Remember I did not cave on the new iTunes’ password. But at this time we are not choosing to make any changes. And if you have a young child with autism who has a history of becoming attached to things... learn from my mistakes. haha

On Two Wheels (Part One)

How many of your childhood memories revolve around a bicycle? I learned to ride on a small red bike, my dad or an older brother running beside me and helping me ‘til I learned to balance all by myself. I remember getting my first new bike with a banana seat for my ninth birthday. I think I rode most of the tread off the tires of that bike. I remember the thrill of getting permission to ride all the way around the block by myself when I was old enough, and then later riding to the store with a friend on occasion. There were bike wrecks and bloodied elbows and knees. There were flat tires. Did anyone else out there ever get their pant leg caught in their bike chain? Eventually I upgraded to a ten-speed, but that magenta-colored bike with the banana seat will always be the bike I remember most.

My older kids learned to ride around age five, give or take a year, usually on a hand-me-down bike. Then we would make a trip to the store to buy them a bike of their own. One of my younger kids had no interest in learning to ride. Each summer I tried to coax him onto a bike and each summer he said, “no.” Finally, about age ten, the first day of his summer vacation, I announced that there would be no video games played until he could ride a bike. He learned in a matter of minutes and rode a lot that summer. He continues to ride often. Our youngest, Sydney, learned to ride at a fairly young age, handicap and all. I found a bike at a yard sale that was like the one I loved so much as a kid, all the way down to the banana seat. She rides it a lot but recently has decided she needs to have one with hand brakes. I see a new bike in her near future.

Tate, like many people with autism, has trouble with motor skills. He cannot jump gracefully or run quickly. He walks with an awkward gait, often on his toes. He was able to ride a tricycle when he was a preschooler and we tried a few times to get him on a bicycle with no success. Recently, a developmental pediatrician we saw asked me if Tate liked to ride a bike. I told her that he was unable and she asked me why. I was surprised that she was even asking. She sees kids with autism all the time. I had to ask myself: Was I just rationalizing and making excuses or were there valid reasons Tate could not ride a bike? We had not tried to get Tate on a bicycle in years. Although Tate does have to work much harder than his neurotypical peers to master new skills, he sometimes surprises me. Just saying that it surprises me when Tate succeeds at difficult tasks makes me somewhat sad and embarrassed. Why should I NOT expect Tate to do well? Why am I such a cynic? I’ve never been that parent who expects great things from her children. I expect average things from my children and less than average things from my children with disabilities. Do not misunderstand me. I am extremely proud of my children. ALL of my children. And I believe my children ARE doing great things. But, I have always been somewhat of a pessimist, my whole life. I suppose if I do not expect great things in life then I cannot be disappointed if great things do not ensue. Then, when great things DO happen, I can be pleasantly surprised. What would it have been like had I lived the last 51 years expecting great things? Would my family be doing even greater things than they are now? I surely hope my pessimistic attitude has not held any of them back.

The day I told Tate’s doctor he could not ride a bike she urged me to find a “bike camp” and enroll him. I had never heard of bike camp. She gave me the name and number of a man to contact in Kansas City who would be able to tell me about it. I called and emailed a few times but never got him to return my calls. Then, amazingly enough, a bike camp fell into our laps in our very own small town. This bike camp is a fantastic opportunity for Tate. I do not believe I would be exaggerating to say, learning to ride a bike could be life-changing for a kid with a disability. The camp boasts of an eighty percent success rate. It is scheduled for this week. 

I have spent a couple of months trying to get Tate excited about learning to ride a bike. He has NOT jumped on board. He has told his peers things like, “My mom THINKS I am going to bike camp this summer but I am not.” He has tried to convince me he was too busy and he has made many excuses. I’ve heard, “I’m not into riding bikes” from him often. He has been very anxious. He has nervously paced and argued for the past two weeks about bike camp, bringing it up often. So, hoping to win him over, I took Tate to Walmart one day last week and showed him the bike I wanted to buy for him. The bike recommended by the bike “experts” is called a cruiser. It has coaster brakes, a wide seat, high handlebars, and wide pedals. Remarkably, it was love at first sight for Tate. He could not own it soon enough. We went back this past Friday morning and purchased the bike. I did not think Tate had the coordination it would take to even wheel the bike to the front of the store so I offered to do it, but he insisted. I had to show him more than once how to hold the handlebars and lean over the bike to steer it as he walked beside it. He probably looked pretty strange pushing that bike through the store. I had a flashback to a few of my six year olds pushing much smaller bikes through Walmart when we were buying their first bikes. This time I was there with my 12 year old who is 6’2” tall. It took a very long time but we made it to the register and out the door with that bike. He even helped me lift it into the van.

The cruiser

So, what does a child with autism do when he becomes the proud owner of a bike that he cannot yet ride? He sits by it for hours. He lovingly wipes it off with a rag once in a while. He takes pictures of it. He talks about it to anyone who will listen. He even fantasizes out loud about riding his bike to the mall. If you have been reading my blog posts long, you will remember Tate has had many unusual attachments to things over the years. There was a cloth diaper fetish when he was little. Then there were ribbons and cords. The vacuum was his major love interest for a long while. There was a stuffed duck he named Boris, a Woody doll, spiral notebooks, a red sweater, his i-pad, his watch, his hat, and his KU Jayhawk hoodie (which we recently had to seize due to the heat…but that is a whole ‘nother blog post.) Never has Tate become obsessed with something this large or something that he cannot keep in the house. 

Despite the love of the new bike, Tate is still insisting he should not go to bike camp tomorrow. He was almost desperate in his attempts to convince me today. We were with friends this evening and he was still attempting to persuade me to let him skip camp. Exasperated, and forgetting that I cannot reason with Tate (it's the autism) or EVER win an argument, I said something like, “Unless you can show me you can ride a bike this evening, you are going to bike camp tomorrow.” He brightened right up, ran over to my friend and told her that his mom had changed her mind and he did not have to go to bike camp. All he had to do was ride two inches on his own. Tate does not understand numbers and has no concept of measurement so I did not let that part worry me. My kid got on that bike tonight and practiced and practiced, determined to get out of bike camp. He persevered much longer than I imagined he would. No, he did not ever truly ride the bike, but with someone (2 or 3 people at times) helping him balance he did pedal it. He was also able to balance by himself with both feet off the ground for a couple of seconds at a time. Yes, he will still be going to bike camp tomorrow and he is still dreading it. The cynical me, the pessimistic me, has thought silently for weeks, “two out of eight kids won’t learn to ride the week of bike camp.” The mom that I wish I could be, the mom that I SHOULD be, will be with Tate every day this week telling him, “You can do it.” Both of us will be proud of him no matter what.

And if he DOES master two wheels? I should probably have a talk with him about that ride to the mall fantasy he is having. 

Read Part Two here: http://quirks-and-chaos.blogspot.com/2014/06/on-two-wheels-part-two.html

I would be so appreciative if you'd tell me in the comments section below where you saw this post. It has been circulated more than any post I've written to date and I'd love to hear where some of you have found it.

Shoes: Fetish or Fashion?

In my last post, I spoke of Tate’s attachment to objects, and I spoke briefly about his shoes.  Mentioning the shoes, brought back a lot of memories for me.  I’m sure Tate’s attachment to his shoes was partly because of the familiarity and routine that went with wearing the same shoes every day.  However, it was more than just that. 

When Tate was at preschool, the attachment to his shoes sometimes got in the way of his daily activities.  There were times when Tate was expected to remove his shoes.  At rest time, or for water play, or sand play, the shoes needed to come off and Tate was stressed.  There were occasional art projects when the kids were supposed to trace their feet, or even make footprints with paint that caused Tate to melt-down.  Paint caused sensory over-load for Tate, even when he was using his hands, so the removal of shoes was a double whammy.  There were a couple of games the teachers played with the students during circle time that caused Tate a lot of anxiety.  One game called for the children to remove one shoe and throw it into a box or bucket.  A child was asked to pull a shoe from the container and take it to its owner, thus teaching matching skills.  Mercifully, the teachers made sure Tate’s show was on top, and back on his foot as soon as possible.  There was another game that was similar and I think both shoes had to come off for that game.  We wanted Tate to take part in as many activities as possible and learn to deal with these kinds of things, so he was forced to participate most of the time.  Tate got plenty of warnings before it was time to take his shoe(s) off and plenty of reassurance that his shoe(s) would only be off for a short time.  I watched circle most days through a two-way mirror and it was hard not to intervene, run into the room to get his shoe back for him.  When Tate becomes anxious it is hard for me to watch.  He seems to be in pain physically. 

When Tate was eight we planned a family trip to Seattle.  It was to be Tate’s first time to fly.  I did not know how Tate would handle the flight.  I had heard some pretty awful stories from people about flying with children who had autism.  Tate’s behavior consultant suggested a social story.  She reminded me Tate would be expected to remove his shoes when we went through security.  She also reminded me about how different the bathrooms look on a plane, another potential trial for Tate.  I am usually able to anticipate and prepare Tate for hardships he will face, but I had not even thought about the difficulties of getting Tate to walk through security.  Any one part of the whole process could have been hard on him, but especially the removal of his shoes.  Allowing his shoes to ride on a conveyor belt would be another potential problem.  Yikes, I was getting worried.  We read the social story several times and acted out “going through security.”  Pretending and imagining are hard things for Tate to do so acting out a scenario is difficult but we tried.  Tate had lots of questions about it all and was quite anxious as he got used to the idea of giving up his shoes to a stranger.  When the day came to leave on our trip, we rushed through security without a hitch.  Tate was nervous and he did stim but, overall, he did very well.  I credit the social story and the practicing.  Thank goodness Tate’s wonderful behavior consultant anticipated the problems and helped us to prevent them.  The airplane ride turned out to be one of Tate’s favorite parts of the vacation.

Tate seems to have outgrown most of his anxiety over shoes.  He still cannot tie a bow so I buy Velcro shoes.  I found a shoe store that carries them in adult sizes.  Tate’s feet are huge now so we just buy the same shoe every time, one size bigger and he hardly notices we got new ones.  Shoe shopping used to be so traumatizing for Tate and now it is not an issue.  I sure hope the Velcro shoes go all the way to size 15 because I imagine his feet will grow as big as his brothers’ feet have.  His feet are already bigger than his brothers’ feet were at age ten.

Shoes are an issue for Sydney too but in a very different way.  Sydney does not form unnatural attachments to inanimate objects. She has favorite toys and clothes but no more than any typically developing child would.  She does, however, LOVE shoes.  Sydney doesn’t get attached to any one pair.  She loves them all.  She learned at a very early age, to say “my shoes are hurting my feet,” as we walked past the shoe department in a store.  I, being the intelligent person that I am, only got “taken” a few times before I figured out the game she was playing.  Sydney’s favorite shoes are flip-flops.  She cannot wear the cheap ones because the plastic gives her blisters, and her high tolerance for pain allows her to ignore the blisters until they are huge sores. (See my earlier post called “Does it Hurt” for discussion about pain tolerance.) I have to buy her flip-flops that have fabric between the toes, and even then, watch for her feet to get sore.  I tried just avoiding flip-flops for her entirely but she took all the laces, straps, and buckles off all her shoes trying to create flip-flops herself.  She just loves them so.  I have to hide them for the fall and winter.  I used to toss them onto a top shelf in my closet.  I have had to find a much better hiding place because the temptation is too much for Sydney’s limited impulse control.  She knew those shoes were up there and climbed my shelves to get them down whenever I was not watching.  Most of my older kids would not have disobeyed like Sydney does, and if they had, they would have learned from a single spanking not to climb the shelves or attempt to get something off-limits.  Sydney does not learn from a spanking and she cannot plan ahead and remember the consequences of her actions.  It amazes me continually that Sydney does not seem to realize she will be found-out if she wears shoes I took away from her.  The impulse control to touch, grab, or obtain things that she wants, is just too great for her to resist.  Exposure to alcohol in the womb took the ability to control her impulses.  No amount of talking, reasoning, or consequences for her actions can give that back to her.  One of my biggest fears for Sydney is that she will someday be in jail because she could not resist the impulse to shop lift and steal things.  I have read that a large percentage of the people in our prisons today, show signs of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS), thus they have little impulse control and they have poor judgment.  They do not learn from the consequences of their past actions or think about what the consequences of their crimes will be.  FAS is a birth defect that mothers (BIRTH mothers) could completely eradicate.  If no more babies were born with FAS the number of people in prison would drop dramatically in a few years.  A child should not have to pay the price for a birth mom’s binges.  It is a life sentence. 

unusual attachments

Tate with his beloved duck named Boris.

One of the signs of autism is an unusual attachment to inanimate objects.  Tate began this at a very young age.  These objects come and go and sometimes come again.  Often, the attachments are video/television related.  One of the first objects I remember Tate attaching himself to was a Blue’s Clues notebook.  He loved the show so I got him a little plastic notebook that came with a crayon.  I had no idea what I had started.  Tate carried the notebook with him everywhere and he slept with it.  If the crayon was separated from the notebook he became inconsolable.  The crayon broke and I replaced it with a similar one but he couldn’t stop thinking about the broken one.  When Tate woke in the mornings, if the notebook was not right beside him, there was panic.  If Tate laid the notebook down and couldn’t remember where he left it, the whole family searched madly until it was found because Tate seemed to be in physical pain.  The notebook became too big of a burden for us to bear.  The Behavior Consultant I have relied on so heavily, advised me to take the notebook away and I threw the notebook out.  We went “cold turkey.”  It took about three days for Tate to accept it but it was gone and our lives became so much easier.  I think if we found a plastic, toy notebook like that today, he’d pick it up and hang on tight.  The pull of the notebook was that strong.  Any small spiral notebook is still very appealing to Tate and I am careful to watch for the obsession to begin.  I make those little notebooks disappear if I see an attachment forming.  I’ve hidden and discarded many over the years.

There have been numerous attachments to objects since that first notebook.  Toy Story toys were very appealing to Tate and he was very attached to a Woody doll for a while.  The doll became a real problem because Tate wanted the hat to stay on the doll’s head at all times.  Tate couldn’t sleep much at night for a while because every time he laid the doll down, the hat would come off its head.  Tate wanted Woody next to him on his pillow (with the hat on) but the hat couldn’t stay on in that position.  Tate would stay awake, to hold the hat on Woody’s head.  I finally had to take Woody away at night and make a rule that Woody could not “sleep” in Tate’s room.  That took days for him to accept.  When we saw Toy Story 3, we were in the theater.  There is a scene in the movie and Woody actually loses his hat for a while.  When Woody lost his hat, I thought “Oh no!  This is going to be a problem.”  It was.  I was empathetic as Tate stopped enjoying the movie and worried about Woody without his hat.  I feared Woody would go on to do Toy Story 4 hatless and leave me with a miserable little boy for years to come, but Woody recovered his hat so Tate and I were spared.       

In that same Toy Story sequel, Buzz spoke in Spanish and Tate became very insistent that his own Buzz should be able to speak Spanish.  He couldn’t let it go.  These kinds of thing become so important to him that he thinks of little else.  If I had been able to find a Buzz that spoke Spanish I probably would have bought it for him.  Most of Tate’s toys do not become obsessions.  Most of Tate’s toys are rarely played with at all.  He likes toys but he likes them to sit on a shelf so he can admire them.   Tate likes to organize his toys into groups.  Some of the groupings make sense to me but some do not.  His cars might all be in a box together but his Star Wars toys might be mixed in with other boxes of toys he “organizes.”  If I try to rearrange things it bothers him and he will often “fix” the “mess” I make when I try to organize.  Tate thinks in this same “unorganized organization” as well.  Temple Grandin explains it well in one of her books.  One memory or thought triggers another and soon Tate is thinking about something that is totally unrelated to the topic at hand.  Because the movies and videos are so appealing to Tate, most of his thoughts come back to a movie scene or character.  This kind of unorganized thinking makes it very hard for Tate to learn.  This is why Tate cannot learn from lectures.  Besides getting lost in all the language that he cannot process quickly enough, he is distracted by all his own thoughts.    

Sometimes Tate becomes attached to things other than toys.  Getting new shoes was something I always dreaded when Tate was younger.  He would carry around the old ones, while he wore the new ones.  He had to “mourn” the loss for a day or two.  Trading our Suburban for a van a few years back was pretty hard on Tate.  Getting new bedroom furniture was a very hard thing.  Tate has blankets and pillow cases that have become very important to him as well.  He has the "pet" rock named Rocky that has been very important to him.  Sometimes Rocky is a big part of our life and then we don’t see him again for a while but he always seems to resurface.  Tate has had attachments to sunglasses before and that attachment had to be nixed.  He wanted to wear the sunglasses, even inside, so it was hard for Tate to see.  One of the longest attachments Tate has ever had is to his watch and his hat.  Tate cannot tell time but he loves his watch.  He couldn’t buckle a watchband for a long time so I found a Velcro band.  The watch even quit working and Tate still wore it.  However, a few months back, he traded it for a new watch, with a strap that buckles and he learned to buckle it.  I was shocked he would even consider a new watch but he did.  There was a time when trading his old watch for a new one would have caused days of anguish.  Tate is so attached to his hat that some people have never seen him without it on.  Hats have always had a tremendous pull for Tate.  He had a fedora he loved when he was little but it was not age appropriate so we hid that one and he chose to wear a black news-boy hat.  Tate wore it until it was falling apart.  Each time a hat becomes worn or stinky, and it is time to trade for a new hat, I warn Tate for a few days prior.  When we actually trade, it can be very stressful for a few days afterward.  It is much like a small child giving up a blanket or a pacifier.   

The last time we went hat shopping, Tate chose a ball cap with a Jayhawk on the front. It was the smoothest transition we have had yet.  I told him to pick two so he could have an extra.  I expected him to pick two exactly alike.  I told him he could do that so the next trade would not really be a trade at all.  But he chose two different hats with a Jayhawk on each.  Once in a while, I bring out the second hat and remind him we have it.  Hopefully, the next trade with go as well as the last.  He is really making some progress. 

If you liked this post here is it's "sequel" Shoes

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