Some wins and gratitude

Hello Nicholeen! Thank you so much for all you are doing. On a fun, positive, and grateful note, I am thrilled seeing my sweet 25 month old little lady pick up on so many wonderful TSG skills. She has been saying "Disagree, Mom?" multiple times. My son's Kinder teacher even overheard her this past week and may have been impressed. Incredibly, she is getting quite good at checking in too, saying things like, "Finished, Mom" and "Anything else?" We are also helping her practice getting calm with cues like "We don't talk like that" and efforts to take deep breaths because of Paige and Clara's sweet examples. I also attribute a lot of her success to some consistency on my part using/teaching these skills as well as her having the blessing of two older siblings to see their examples. This is a fantastic improvement from my second child learning how to throw fits from my oldest in years past. My oldest 8 year old hasn't been out of instructional control for weeks and although we are working on the nuances of internal calm and control (since outright out of control is not much of an issue anymore), I'm so grateful for the progress we've had in the last year or more. My middle child (almost 6 year old boy) still has work to do with TSG. Because of this process implementing TSG though, I'm learning and realizing how sensitive he is, how deeply he feels his emotions, and the anxiety he experiences so I can better respond. He still goes to the modified rule of 3 fairly often (at least a few times a week and on some rough days, up to a few times per day) and goes out of instructional control at least weekly-ish +, but my tolerances are much lower than they used to be, so the things that get him to a loss of privileges are milder. We're not dealing so much with the severe emotional outbursts (physically hitting/kicking/screaming fits) as we used to with less power struggling. I'm able to remain calm more than I used to because I know I can rely on these skills to get my children back in control versus yelling/screaming/or threatening higher/worse consequences to get them to respond/behave. We still have lots of work to do. Truthfully, I still do lose my calm at times, but again, these are more mild than in months prior and I'm able to recognize and even apologize to my children faster. My husband was particularly touched yesterday when I said sorry to him about a small thing and our 2 year old overheard and told me, "I forgive you" in response.