THE SHADDOX BOYS

Jacob and Elijah Shaddox are brothers. Jacob is 21 years old and just moved into an apartment with his girlfriend. He graduated from a technical college with an Associate's degree in Computer Maintenance. He works for a school district as a computer technician. Elijah is almost 18 years old. He is hearing impaired, has Tourette Syndrome, OCD and ADHD. He is a junior in high school. Elijah lives with his mom Mary and her wife, his stepmom. Mary has a bachelor's in deaf education and a masters in special education, and is an educational diagnostician. Life is always changing and this blog has chronicled many of these changes and will continue to do so!






Tuesday, June 5, 2012

The Jigsaw Puzzle

The boys and I went out shopping the other day and on a whim we decided to buy a jigsaw puzzle. I let Jacob choose the puzzle and he went for this one, which is 2000 pieces. I thought, no problem we can do this and I still think we can, but it may take all summer!  I remember doing puzzles with my mom when I was a kid, and how much I enjoyed it. I thought it might also teach Elijah some patience, but so far he is just wearing on my patience! We will keep trying though. I have found that working on the puzzle gives Jacob and I a chance to talk. It also gets him off of the laptop for an hour or so a day, which is a good thing. He will be 16 next month and he is just growing up too fast. I have to make this time with him! We had an interesting conversation last night while working on the puzzle. We were listening to the news and the story was about the two dads in the Target circular in the newpaper. People were upset that there were two dads that were together as a couple. I didn't say much and then Jacob said, "What's the big deal? People just need to learn to be tolerant." He also shared that some other kids at school call him a "Ginger", because of his red hair. I had seen a story about this on "What would you do?" that comes on most Friday night. I asked him what he does when he is called that, and he said he ignores them. He said that they are just ignorant and don't know better. It was a good conversation and I was glad we had it.


Now back to the puzzle! Another tips when purchasing a puzzle, be sure you have a big enough table. As you can see we haven't gotten very far on the puzzle! You might also be able to see the board we had to buy at Home Depot, so we can move it off the table when we need to eat! We are still missing some edges, but hopefully we will find them soon. I hope to have more conversations with both boys as we sit around the table this summer working on this puzzle! I'll post more pictures as we make more progress. 

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