Laundry Day, Joshua!

At first Josh was VERY afraid of our new laundry machine. He never was afraid of the old one, would hear it and knew what the sound was. Would touch the machine to verify that it was making that sound (could feel it working).

But when we bought the NEW machine, and he could see the clothes inside spinning, the water rushing in, he would watch it and scream out of fear! But he wouldn't turn away.

I turned this into a huge communication exercise for him. It was almost straight out of a "Learn to Talk Around the Clock" video, something I saw at a workshop in Rhode Island. We talked about the dirty clothes, that they needed water and soap to clean them, the clothes were taking getting washed/taking a "bath" in the laundry machine, then they needed to dry in the dryer, etc.

He VERY QUICKLY got over his fear of the machine and rather became fascinated with it. SO fascinated that we had to put a lock on the laundry room door to keep him out of the room. But when there's laundry to be done, and he's around to do it, he has absolutely taken over and won't even let us in the room except to help lift him to push the buttons. And put soap in, I won't let him touch the soap.

Josh's "laundry language" has absolutely taken off, too. Dirty towel? No problem. He'll take it from you and throw it down to the laundry, telling you about it all the way. He DOES vocalize all the time about it, too, but we need to work on that a bit more. I'm just thrilled that he's more comfortable using his expressive language (no problems at all with receptive "laundry language"). And with the added bonus of such a cute little chore helper? That's a big plus in my book. :)