Scholastic Clifford's Good Deeds

This book came today for our son, and I was super excited. Now, I did read it to him, or at least tried to, as he sat there bouncing on my yoga ball and pretended like there was no book in my hand and refused to look at the pictures, while simultaneously giving the book stink eye out of the corner of his eye. That's ok, I pretty much knew that was how it's going to go down, and I've already got a back up plan for getting him to love Clifford as much as I do...season 1 of the TV show.Anyways, about the book. This book was one of the more important books to me in the Clifford series to get for my son. Because he has a rare form of cerebral gigantism, he's rather large for his age, and he struggles with muscle coordination and so sometimes, things don't go as planned for him. And partly because of the Autism he also has, he doesn't really understand sometimes people's reactions to things going wrong, especially when he's trying to help out. And I don't want him to become discouraged and stop trying. Because just like Clifford in this book, he does try to help out sometimes, and much of the time, it ends up not going well or not being the right thing to do. Clifford tries a whole lot to help a lot of different people in this book causing a few problems in the process when things don't go exactly right. And just like Clifford, who keeps trying, so does our little man.Like the times he started noticing our cat food bowls were empty and filling them to the brim with kitty kibble. Well, we have a diabetic cat who can only eat certain size portions twice a day. Now, the kitties were thrilled with his attempts to help, but our little guy didn't understand why we weren't. Although sometimes, I totally think I should have let him keep feeding them ;) So I think it is super cool that there is a story in there with a character that is larger than life, because right now he's definitely very large for his age, who also means well, and will sometimes even save the day. Just like I love it that he's now cleaning up his own dishes from the table. Ok, sometimes he tries to throw away the silverware with the yogurt cups, so it's not perfect, but just like Clifford, he's totally trying to help with something and I think he needs to hear me say he's doing a great job trying and that I see what is in his heart. And I think it's important for kiddos who have those kinds of struggles have characters and stories they can see themselves in.So I love the message of this story, because while I think it especially resonates with me because of the size of my son, and will eventually resonate with him for the same reason, I think it's a message all young children need in their lives. Because so often they have a natural desire to help that often exceeds their actual abilities to pull it off exactly right.

My grandson loves the big red dog.

My son loves it!

Thanks