Good Fountain

I continue to be amazed at how powerful the written word is for Chee. It’s not 100% fail-proof (what is?), but it’s certainly incredibly effective. I imagine this to be true for all Hyperlexic children.

Recently Chee’s Occupational Therapist and I had a discussion that perhaps it’s time to move on from using the Alphabet as motivation in developing those fine motor skills. There’s more to writing than the ABCs, and we decided to make a shift. Yesterday her OT presents a picture of an insect that is all jumbled up. Half the head on one side, the other half somewhere else on the page. The belly and the back and the wing and the legs all mixed up on the page. Chee’s instructions were to choose a color and then to color the face or the belly, etc. Once it was all colored, they would cut it out and piece it together. Lots of skills to work on there - coloring (holding crayon properly), cutting and gluing.

She became quite distracted and seemed unable to focus and complete any coloring. I asked her OT what does she think that’s all about and she said she thinks it’s challenging for Chee, something new, and so she’s checking out. Probably right as I’ve seen her do that before. More than a few times.

OT then flipped the page over and wrote BUG on the back and then FACE. After Chee read the words, she told her, I want you to color the bug’s face. Chee focused and readily complied. Then OT wrote BELLY on the back and repeated the above steps. Same thing from Chee - focus and completion.

This week I am going to take some similar type of coloring pages - something jumbled up - and try to repeat the project with Chee. I want to see if reading is always necessary for project completion, or just when it’s something new. My hunch is only when it’s something new.

This is on my mind right now because I get very little feedback from Chee’s teacher about how she’s doing. Which for the most part I know that means she’s doing fine - at least behaviorally. If there were behavioral problems I’m sure I’d know. The only occasional comment I’ll get is that Chee didn’t seem to understand a task, or understand the big picture of what’s going on.

We have our next parent-teacher conference in a couple of weeks and I want to have armed myself with some examples to show how simply writing down a word or two will help convey a concept, idea or direction in a way that Chee can understand.

Via our private speech therapy and occupational therapy, I see how incredibly powerful writing down a few words is to help Chee connect the dots. At home, I see how reading the words herself helps prepare her for new experiences (such as the Sesame Street outing). I’d like to see the same simple accommodations being made at school too.

Meanwhile, I have to figure out what is the typical stuff that works. I find myself reaching for pen and paper to try and help Ess out - and she just tries to eat the paper. Parenting two very different kids requires very different approaches. My parenting muscles sure are getting a big workout lately.