PWS and Holidays

Although this time of year can be a fun and exciting time, for those with Prader-Willi Syndrome it can also be even more stressful. Thankfully our Thanksgiving went relatively smooth this year. Last year our son, who was then 13, crawled out his window in the wee hours of the morning and ran away. The whole story of his elopement can be found here. I would be lying if I didn't say that memory has been in the back of my mind for most of the month. Especially after hearing about a 19 year old who had PWS, that ran away recently and was hit by a vehicle.

We were fortunate to have my inlaws here on Wednesday so that is when we had our Thanksgiving meal. As far as food goes, the way my family does Thanksgiving (and Christmas) is a lot different than how we did it growing up. I come from a big family so we would normally have 20-30 people for dinner and there was a huge variety of food. Food was in dishes over every surface of the kitchen and much of it stayed out for hours. You just cannot do it that way with PWS. We keep things very simple. We have about 4 different dishes and a couple of desserts. We can never leave food out as it leaves too much temptation and causes too much anxiety. Even on normal days we do not sit at the table with extra food. We dish up our plates in the kitchen and bring it to the table. (okay I admit sometimes we all go downstairs and watch Netflix while we eat ;)

The major issue we are having right now is even more questions than normal. (and he asks a lot of questions normally) Even more so he asks about the next meal, the next snack, the next time he will get a dessert. With the cooler weather we are getting less exercise so despite the fact our son is slim...we are watching it more than we do when we can walk a few miles a day. Hopefully we can get back swimming soon.

We took last week off from doing schoolwork but will be jumping right back in to it tomorrow. I'm thinking about getting A~man into an art curriculum that Z~girl enjoyed a lot last year. I just signed both kids up for a homeschool matchbox exchange. (I've never heard of it before this week) Each month has a theme and you take a match box and decorate it and fill it with things having to do with the theme. This month the theme is "Famous Artist" so we are going to have all sorts of fun with THAT! I am always on the look out for activities to help out our right brain visual learner and throw some kinesthetic learning in there too! I will definitely be sharing the project in my blog so stay tuned.