Autism Journey Day 20-Our older kids were both involved in sports. Typically I stayed home with Paige while Brad took them to games. I felt so guilty about this. All of the other parents were able to go. I wanted to watch Spencer play baseball and Shelby play volleyball, but the meltdowns I knew would occur and I worried about embarrassing our other kids. So much guilt!!! I think all moms have guilt or take responsibility for a lot of what happens. I used to tell the older kids that everyone has a cross to bear; no one has a perfect life even if they try to make it look perfect on social media. Why wasn’t I listening to that thought myself? I talked to our behavioral therapist and she recommended taking a highly reinforcing edible and practicing “good sitting” at the baseball games. We bought a massive bag of candy corn, which was Paige’s favorite. We took separate cars to Spencer’s baseball game and we got up on the bleachers to watch and practice good sitting. We paired the verbal “good sitting” with the candy, which was key!!! Our behavioral therapist told me to aim for 5 minutes and then leave. Paige did a great job and we left after 5 minutes. We kept increasing our stay by 5 minutes until she could sit for the whole game. It was worth every minute of practice!!! We still drove separate cars to pretty much everything, but we were there as a family!! The next step was decreasing the amount of candy corn we gave her. We started only giving candy corn intermittently, while still saying “good sitting.” Pairing the verbal with the edible in the beginning meant we could fade the candy and keep the verbal until she was sitting for the entire game with no candy reinforcement!! How amazing is that?!!!