Play place breakthrough

Today I got out of fieldwork early so I took Josh to McDonalds. It is a dream of mine that one day he will say, "Oh l, look, other children. I bet they would be fun to play with. And look at this huge plastic labyrinth. That looks like fun!" Instead he spends his time "playing" the video games, playing with his happy meal toy, and perhaps staring while standing too closely to strangers. Today, however, with only about 20 minutes of bribing and coaxing, he climbed the tower part (not the tube) and into one of the large domes. First I stood on the right side then the left progressively higher to force him to go to the next level to interact with me. The deal was that once there I would use his Madagascar 3 toy and shoot the zebra out of the cannon at him multiple times. Then he laughs, comes 1/2 way down the tower to where he can hold my hand and give me kisses through a slat in the plastic before going back up. We did this for about 45 minutes. He even stayed (although frozen) when someone passed him in the tower (he is afraid of other children because they are so fast and they tend to knock him over without noticing). One time there was even a bigger boy (9ish) in the dome but he was so excited to see the zebra shoot up at him that he kept yelling "Bo!" until the boy looked mildly concerned with his sanity and left. Maybe within the year I can convince him the tube bits are not evil. I am so proud of my little guy.