So, it's been a very productive day for Raiser Erin and Rocco. For those of you who don't know I am graduating from High School tomorrow. So, this evening was my Baccalaureate. Rocco and I went to take individual pictures, group photos, and then on to Baccalaureate. He did very well and wasn't scared of the string quartet at all. Unfortunately he was scared of clapping. Oh dear. We had to leave early anyway.
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Here he is waiting outside with us.
One last hug before we go in.
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Here we go!
We left about half way through to go to my best friend's Eagle Scout Ceremony. Carl and I have history, I won't be shy, we used to date. But now he and I are best friends. I cannot tell you the happiness I felt when I saw him up there receiving the rank of Eagle Scout. For those of you who aren't Scout people the Eagle is the highest rank a scout can receive. Less than half of those who start out in scouts end up as Eagles because it takes years of hard work and determination. I am now proud to not only have a Grandfather and Brother who have earned the rank of an Eagle Scout, but a best friend too. Congratulations Eagle Scout Carl! You earned it! But there's a lot of clapping at these ceremonies as well and he was kind of freaked out.
There he is waiting in the church.
You can't really tell, but here's Carl lighting his Eagle candle.
Eagle Scout? Yeah...you can see the little badge on his left your right. It's the red, white, and blue one.
Freaked out may be too conservative a term. He almost bolted quite a few times. Now, since I was trying to calm him down, and nothing was working (please don't tell my CFR Jim) I started using food. It worked surprisingly well. By the end of Carl's ceremony every time there was clapping he would sit up and look at me instead of bolting. I'll talk to Mary about this and see if we can continue to use this when there is clapping. Yes only clapping. Why? Because he isn't scared of anything else. Carl plays the bassoon and he played really loud. It put him to sleep. Movies put him to sleep. It's just clapping. He's so weird.
What a fun time! What you could try doing for the clapping is get a recording of it and play it at a very low level on your computer or something and gradually increase the level so Rocco becomes desensitized to it. That way if you can't continue to use food for the desentization you can still get the same end result of clapping=no big deal. Good luck with that fear!
ReplyDeleteWOW - another bassoon player! I play bassoon too! WOOOT!!!! GO BASSOONISTS!!!! Okay, now that I got that out! :D Sounds like he made good progress through out the whole thing - I hope they let you use the food to help him relax with the clapping. You can do it Rocco!
ReplyDeleteYou play Bassoon! Wow! What a small world. We go to a music high school so it's a given that there would be one bassoon player at least (I think we have 3), but I never thought I would meet someone out there randomly who played. That's great! Carl's a great player. Youtube him sometime.
ReplyDeleteYeah - totally awesome. I was also such a music nerd in college that I was in the honorary band sorority Tau Beta Sigma. Such good memories! :D Bassoon paid for my college though - although I didn't major in music. That rocks.. I'll have to Youtube him!
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