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Just this past week we were clued into a nifty little playground just minutes from home. We’ve been driving 15 minutes to get a good playground, and then only on evenings or weekends when we can use man-to-man defense on the kids. The further playground has huge body of water near it and I’m not comfortable watching the two kids on my own when one of them could easily zip down the hill, out of my sight, and head to the lake. Me, I’m just a little neurotic…
This new playground is small, not near a large body of water, and has the perfect combination of shtuff to develop gross motor skills and practice strength, balance and coordination. Perfect for my little Chee. Perfect for my even littler Ess. Perfect.
The piece de resistance of the playground is the zip line. Particularly for Ess. We have to pry her fingers off and then she screams, “Again! Again!! Again!!” Chee loves it as well. Especially when she discovered she can let go and crash onto about 9 inches of rubber mulch. Can we say proprioceptive input anyone?
I love this playground. I love watching Chee balance across the moving bridge and climb the rock wall. Going to the playground with her used to be pretty dull. She generally just circled the playground, maybe climbed a few steps, possibly went down the teeniest slide. She always stood at the bottom of the enclosed slide and watched other kids come down. Thanks to gravitational insecurity and a whacky vestibular sense, she wouldn’t go down long slides or climb tall ladders. And this was just last summer.
Things have certainly changed.
…brag.
That’s right. Mother’s brag. It’s part of what we do. I try NOT to brag too often about my kids to people that I’m around in so-called real life. I don’t want people to roll their eyes when they see me coming because they’re afraid they’ll hear another story about the Amazing Chee and Indescribable Ess.
But you, my virtual friends, you can skim or just move right past and I never have to know you rolled your eyes. So on with the bragging. It’s not a lot, don’t worry.
I don’t spend enough time talking about my delightful little Ess. She’s pretty stinking phenomenal though. Her communication is incredible. She has been speaking in sentences since 14 months and now, at 18 months, she’s getting even more expressive. If you ask her what her name is, she answers, My name is Ess. If you point to a picture of her and ask who’s that, she says, That’s me. (Chee still answers, That’s Chee, when pointing to a picture of herself.) She answers yes and no appropriately to most questions. Although usually the answer is no, especially if the question has anything to do with the possible consumption of food. She can recite parts of the alphabet, but not the whole thing all the way through. I believe she has picked up on her sister’s constant spelling of things. She stood in front of the washer today pointing at the Bosch and calling out random letters. Her favorite sentences begin with I want and end with too. Because she wants whatever her sister has. No matter what. She’s a nurturing mama to her baby dolls and a few stuffed animals. Her favorite book right now is Counting Kisses and she’s still a fan of any book that features Elmo and now especially Zoe. She’s fearless on the playground but will hide shyly behind my legs if anyone talks to her. And she’s still Mama’s girl.
And then there’s Chee who I write so much about, yet it feels like everything I write about her has to do with how she’s overcome this or struggling with that. There’s lots to Chee that have nothing to do with special needs. Chee is the giggle monster. So many things make her laugh. And what an infectious laugh she has. (Until it’s gone on too long and then it’s annoying.) She’s an awesome big sister. She shows so much concern when Ess is crying. There, there, it will be okay, she often tells her. Today, sitting next to Ess in the shopping cart, she just showered her with kiss after kiss. It was very sweet and just a wee bit emotional. Of course we know she likes to read (you can’t read this blog and not know that) and be read to as well. Her current rotation of bedtime books include a couple of Curious George books, her book about being a big sister, and a Body Book that she’s using to memorize the parts of the body and learn words like digestion and breathing and circulation. Chee is fairly proficient in Sign Language thanks to our friends at Signing Time! She can sign the alphabet and will finger spell words to us sometimes rather than speak. Her signing vocabulary is well over 300 signs. (As an aside, I credit the Signing Time! series with the being THE thing that pushed Chee’s language development. Being the visual learner and lover of songs that she is – that combination in the Signing Time! series was a homerun for her. We like to say it’s when the light bulb came on.) Her speech therapist does worksheets with her to help build her language skills. Chee’s doing worksheets at a first grade level already. She picks things up very fast. She is shy in a crowded room, but in a smaller setting she doesn’t know a stranger. She is Daddy’s girl through and through.
Okay, bragging over. This had to be done.
I’m a mother.
We brag.
This is my 100th post. Yay me.
To commemorate, I wrote my six-word memoir.
Afraid to try, glad I did.
I’m not going to do any tagging, but I would love for all my friends (who haven’t already done so) to write their own six-word memoir. Please let me know when you do.
I cannot say enough good things about the House Rules. It’s only been a few days, but it’s quite impressive, it is, the power of written-out House Rules to a child who learns, processes, and flat-out loves to read.
Unabashedly I admit that I took Ben’s House Rules as my own. The first three at least. They are the right first three rules for Chee (as they must have been for Ben as well – funny how these little Hyperlexics challenge their parents quite similarly).
- Cooperate with Mommy and Daddy.
- Use words to communicate.
- Do not push or hurt others.
First I have to share that it was so cute listening to her to sound out cooperate. After 3 or 4 tries, getting it nearly right, she said to me, Mommy, what is it? And of course, she’s not forgotten it since. Once she learns a new word, she never forgets it.
Several times throughout the day I found it necessary to ask her what Rule #1 is, and each time it redirected her to an appropriate activity. Generally, the appropriate activity being compliance with me on getting dressed, or getting shoes on, or cleaning up a mess. Impressive. Today was practically a breeze. Practically. Comparatively. Breezey might be getting a little ahead of ourselves.
She loves to run to the wall and review her Rules and to share them with visitors. She read them to both Grandma and Grandpa today. And when asked what Rule #1 is, she always added in to cooperate with Grandma or Grandpa.
Since the House Rules have worked so well, I came up with my own little idea for improving snacks and mealtimes. It seems Chee loves to revert to eating with her fingers half the time, and getting her to wash her hands after eating is a battle. Unless I remind her before the meal is over to wash her hands. With a reminder ahead of time, she’s pretty good about it. But guess who’s always forgetting to remind…
So I took a Plexiglas 4×6 picture frame and wrote the following ‘rules’ (although I didn’t label them rules) out for her.
- Eat with a fork or spoon, not your fingers.
- Take your plate to the sink.
- Wash your hands.
This made all the difference today. Even if I didn’t remind Chee before she was done eating, all I had to do was pick up the frame and ask her to read the rules, and off she’d go to wash her hands, soap and everything. Same with taking her plate to the sink. She was on it.
I have big plans for more written out rules, routines, guidelines, etc. Big plans. If I’m not careful, there will be posters and Plexiglas frames adorning our walls and tabletops everywhere. I’ll be more selective than that, I think. I wouldn’t want to overuse something only to have it lose its beautiful power.
Now where’s my Sharpie?
Chee is out of sorts sensory-wise. So many frustrating-to-me (and probably to her as well) behaviors. Either she’s out of sorts or she’s just becoming really obnoxious (which I’ve not ruled out). When this kind of behavior happens, I find it beneficial to try and determine if there’s something bigger going on and also see if there’s something I can do to help her through it.
Here’s a sampling of what we’ve been dealing with this week.
Went to a store last night to purchase a new set of patio furniture. She wanted to ride in one of those horrible contraptions that is a shopping cart with a TV (something she has never ridden in but is desperate to). We said no but that she could play by them while we took turns looking at the patio furniture which was about 10 feet away. She could see whichever parent was at the patio furniture and of course the other parent was standing next to her. This was not a good plan. Where’s Daddy? Where’s Mommy? Frantic about whoever was not right with her. Total meltdowns ensued. Many of them. She asked for a lotta lotta hugs. Her big issue is she needed both of us to be in the car, in our seats. Having one of us out of the car was stressful.
The ride home from said store she cried and cried and at one point shouted, I’m angry. I’m angry. Through the tears she communicated that she wanted to go shopping and she wanted something to eat. I told her to pick a store and we would go there. She said, How about T? T for Target!” So after a brief stop at home to drop off the patio furniture that was in danger of spilling out of our van, we went to Target. All was fine until after she and I came out of the bathroom (yes, public restroom toilet usage has been conquered) and she said, Where’s Daddy? and realized Daddy wasn’t there. He’s in the van with Ess. Total meltdown. My response was just to step over her flailing body and say, I’m heading out to the van. She popped up and ran with me, still crying.
These two examples are increasing in frequency. She wants us both to be with her if we both can. So long as Daddy is not at work then he should be wherever the rest of us are. Similarly, if I want to go somewhere at night, she asks constantly where I am. Not crying and upset, but seemingly stressed a bit. I’m working on coming up with something (that won’t tear or break) I can give her to comfort her when I’m away from her. She is not doing this consistently all the time, and I want to make sure we don’t get to that point. But perhaps that she’s doing it is an indicator that she’s a bit stressed or dysregulated or … something.
There are a couple of other things she has done that illustrate to me that she’s not herself right now. I’m not sure if it’s Sensory Processing challenges or not. I’m leaning that way for now.
I picked up a toy piano (for a $1 at a Thrift Store) that has demo songs pre-recorded. As expected she is pressing all the buttons over and over again – partly I think it’s a sound stimming kind of thing, and partly I think she’s trying to figure out what all the buttons do. She listens to about 2 seconds of each demo song before going to the next one, until she gets to Let it Be. She listens to that one all the way through and claps when it’s over. And zips through all the other demo songs quickly to get to that one again. So I found the above link and played it for her. She became upset and cried and said, I don’t like that song, turn it off.
Chee circled the room at her art class today. Today’s activity was finger painting and after about 2-3 minutes of it, she was done and she repeatedly circled the room and walked in and out of the door. In the past, that has been typical behavior of an over-stimmed Chee.
Often times I can attribute sensory dysregulation to a developmental spurt. Seems like at the same time that I’ll be thinking how amazing her language has been, I’ll be frustrated by her behavior. Maybe the potty training this time? Her language does continue to develop and grow, but add in the mix the independence and responsibility and awareness that she now has… I don’t know for sure. Just thinking out loud here.
What’s coming to mind is to figure out a way to help her (and us) manage through what’s shaping up to be a busy summer with lots of changes. School will be letting out in a couple of weeks, she’ll start a tumbling class and the Dramakinetics class. We have relatives coming to visit, including a couple of close-in-age cousins, and we’ll be taking our first family beach vacation.
Maybe a revamping of our home Sensory Diet. We’ve been doing the same stuff since January without much change. Maybe another social story to work on ways to express herself when she’s upset and we’re away from home.
And maybe add another rule or two to our House Rules list. I followed Ben’s Dad’s advice on this post (thanks Chris!) and created some House Rules. Chee has memorized them already and responded very well today when asked, Hey, what’s Rule #1? (Cooperate with Mommy and Daddy) when she was trying to use our recliner as a human launching pad.
Maybe I’m crazy, but sometimes I think that this sensory acting out is a good thing. It gives me a chance to see what areas we need to work on and gives her a chance to grow and develop.
And usually I get lots more requests for hugs.
Remember Chee’s shingles?
Not shingles. Hasn’t healed the way shingles would heal. Misdiagnosed.
We’re going to try some hydrocortisone ointment and if that doesn’t work, it’s off to the dermatologist.
Sigh.
At least she’s a thousand percent better about going to the doctor. The thought of a big battle involving medical people … I don’t want to think about it. Things are much improved in that arena thankfully.
We’ve got ourselves a little medical mystery.
Mystery. That’s my girl.
Every mother has a sleep story to tell. Or so it seems. There are the kids who were rotten sleepers from day one. Waking every 30 minutes to eat and requiring endless rocking to fall asleep. Then there are the ones who slept awesome from day one. Sleeping a 5-hour stretch at two weeks, and through the night at three months. Those same kids are still napping practically to Kindergarten. And in between there are probably a thousand different kinds of sleepers.
We have our sleep stories, too. With Chee, it’s more of a saga. A bedtime saga. Once asleep, the girl sleeps. She woke twice a night until she weaned from breastfeeding at 22 months. Once weaned, she has consistently slept solidly (except for the occasional incident of confusional arousal). Falling asleep is decidedly more challenging than staying asleep.
I won’t bore you with a rehashing of the various bedtime routines we have implemented. Routines that all had their day in the sun but eventually were discarded. I’d be lying if I even suggested that anyone but Chee is in control of her bedtime routine. I’ve come to accept that it is what it is. And eventually she will fall asleep on her own in her room. Eventually. It is unlikely her Daddy will accompany her to college so they can play five minutes with Maggie, five minutes with Thomas, five minutes with the sticker book, and then read three stories and tell two. Unlikely.
As her mom, I feel there has only been one great tragedy in the Chee saga of sleep. She gave up her nap at 19 months. I can say with all honesty that I cried when I realized it happened. It was a hellacious month leading up to this discovery. This sad realization. For weeks I battled to get her to sleep every night. It took hours every night. She would run and play and laugh and carry on. As awake and alert at 10 pm as she was at 7 pm.
Slowly, because I can be dense, I noticed that she went to bed so fine, so easy on days she didn’t nap. Equally as slowly I noticed what a challenge it was to get her to take a nap. Starting to catch on a little quicker now, I observed that she didn’t have meltdown after meltdown around dinner time – as friends reported their child did on days they missed a nap.
And with that dawning, Chee’s napping days were over. Quiet time followed for about 9-10 months, until Ess was born. I should make it clear that Chee got plenty of sleep. It was all at night. She often slept in till 9:00 or 9:30. I tried waking her up early to try to get a nap in, but it didn’t work. Not a good move at all.
And now here’s Ess. Sigh. Guess who’s been fighting naps. Guess who took a nap today and then stayed awake till after 9:00 tonight. She’s 18 months old now. I have wondered since the day she was born if she would make it past 19 months and still be napping. For the next month I’m going to pay attention. And I’m going to cross my fingers and toes and everything in between and hope that tonight was an isolated incident. Hope that it’s the two teeth pushing their way up that made for trouble napping.
I love my girls, I need not say it, but we all get along a little better if we get some space every day.
Sleep needs are probably genetic.
If so, I have only myself to blame. I’m a terrible napper and I don’t need to sleep much.
I just need them to sleep.
Today was a day and a half.
Chee has me up against a wall with how to discipline her on a couple of different things. I don’t know if it’s her particular bag of issues that makes it seem like standard-fare parenting techniques are met with zero success, or if it’s that I don’t appear as though I mean business.
But I do. I mean business. I actually said that today.
You better cut it out, Chee, and I mean business!
What was that? For one thing it was apparently hysterical judging by the laughter that ensued. Her laughter, not mine.
I sometimes wonder if I cut her a bit too much slack. When it’s time to get ready to leave for OT or Speech, she doesn’t cooperate. She laughs and laughs and runs screaming (with laughter) away from me when I try to hand her her pants or her socks and shoes. I hate wrestling her down to get her dressed. I hate screaming at her. Plain old talking does nothing. Is this what life is like for everyone with a 3 1/2 year old?
Today was one of those days where she wouldn’t listen to me on anything. I needed to talk to her OT for a bit after the session. She wanted to leave. I gave her things to do to keep herself occupied but they lasted only briefly. She ignored all requests to be patient and wait quietly for Mommy. She ended up dumping a baggy of Cheerios all over the floor. This resulted in a huge crying fit because we made her help clean them up. Oh the injustice. What finally calmed her down was a promise to go see the receptionist (she loves the receptionist) after she finished cleaning up the Cheerios. Everything is a negotiation. Everything. And even that is not a guarantee of compliance.
I think I understand that that is typical of preschoolers. What mother hasn’t been through countless negotiations to get through a simple trip to the supermarket. What I think is not typical, and is perhaps related to her aforementioned bag of issues, is the seeming ineffectiveness of consequences. Today she lost her TV privileges for not getting dressed when it was time to leave for school. Who cares? She found plenty to do when Curious George was banned. Consequences are either ineffective or result in epic-proportion meltdowns, as in the case of Timeout. Timeouts are off the table. They aren’t worth it.
I seem to find myself defaulting to Prevention Mode. For the most part, I know how to keep her in line. Prep, prep and more prep. And the promise of a reward. After we leave OT we’re going to Costco. In Costco you have to keep your hands on the cart. If you listen to Mommy in the store, we’ll have some yogurt. Usually that works.
But when it doesn’t, and she decides to get silly on me, and spin in the store, and run away from me, and knock apples on the floor and empty baggies of Cheerios, when that happens, I can’t get through to her. No amount of cajoling, promising or threatening makes a difference. Cut it out, Chee, and I mean business falls on deaf ears.
Some of this is probably typical of a child her age, and some of it may be related to her Language Processing or her Sensory Processing. It’s really hard to say since my only other reference point is kept pretty occupied eating a banana in the shopping cart … and it’s pretty typical for an 18 month old to run away when you tell her it’s time to get dressed.
Wait. Is that it? Did I just stumble on something? Is Chee imitating her little sister with some of this? I have noticed a few examples of that. Playing with the cats food and water dishes, for example, started up again when Ess discovered them.
I don’t know if that’s it entirely, but I now suspect some of the new obnoxious behaviors are part imitation.
The rest, I don’t know.
But we’ll keep on. Prep. More Prep. Promise of a reward.
Couldn’t that be a definition of parenting itself?
The meeting is over. The anxiety is relieved. (At least until the day or two before the next meeting.)
In short, their biggest concern is Chee’s failure (such an ugly word) to interact and engage with her peers.
Later that afternoon, Chee and I went to her Art Class for SPD kids (which is pretty cool). There I witnessed the following:
We were playing with a big blue parachute pretending it was the ocean and she was “swimming” in it. P, the other child in the class, was not participating, choosing to stand against the wall and look around. Chee took the parachute over to him and she said, “Hey, P, want to come and swim in the ocean? Want to be a fish?”
That was COMPLETELY on her own … NO prompting from me. She just did it. So I guess she’s not failing…
Their other concern is what they are calling anxiety. She takes a long time to come into the classroom, choosing to stand in the doorway and observe for awhile, and then she goes through the same script everyday during the sign in process (where she practices writing her name). She takes a long, long time to choose a marker and then takes forever to write her name, whereas most other kids zip through this in just a minute or two.
The team’s feeling is that coming in the classroom is overwhelming for Chee and she is giving herself time to get acclimated to the situation. A loooong time.
I don’t know what to say about that. I don’t know what to do about that.
My gut tells me that it’s connected to the SPD and as we continue weekly OT to address those needs, we’ll see less anxiety.
My gut also tells me that it’s connected to her Language, and that as that continues to develop, and she can find the words to express her feelings, we’ll see less anxiety.
Expressing feelings is coming. Just last week, for the first time ever she told me she felt mad about something. She was upset and said, I felt mad! I felt mad! (Music to my ears.)
The last part of the meeting was about Kindergarten. Chee has a summer birthday, so she can start Kindergarten when she’s 5, or we can wait till she’s 6. They want to know which way am I leaning. Everything I have read about children with Hyperlexia says that their language really takes off between ages four and five. With that in mind, I’m reserving judgment on when she should start Kindergarten for about another six months. Let’s just see how things go.
Taking a wait and see approach is not my general modus operandi.
Right now I think it’s the only approach I can take. We’re doing all the right things, including getting together a solid game plan for social interaction this summer.
Ohm.
Tomorrow morning I meet with Chee’s team at school for a conference. It’s not the annual IEP meeting, that won’t be until December, this is a quarterly progress report.
I know Chee is doing awesome. The language development, the sensory modulation, the improved fine and gross motor skills that I see daily evidence of is reassuring (and incredible too). There is no doubt that she is progressing. I can give countless examples of conversations we have, new experiences that she handles beautifully, and successful activities that demonstrate her vastly-improved fine and gross motor skills. And let’s not forget that not-so-insignificant achievement of potty training.
(In searching for posts where I’ve recounted her language development, I can’t find any. Oh my. I have much to share. The girl amazes us every day! At the end of this I’ll share a couple of gems.)
Why do I feel anxious? Because I want her teacher and therapists to see what I see, yet I fear they don’t. Perhaps they are conditioned to focus on the deficits. After all, that kinda IS their job – to identify and support her where she needs help. Perhaps Chee doesn’t show off her true self at school the way she does at home. That can probably be said of many a child.
A note came home today with one positive sentence and three areas of concern. The positive sentence is that she continues to make progress. The areas of concern are her echolalic speech patterns, her lack of interaction with her peers, and her episodes of anxious behavior.
When we start the meeting, I think I’ll ask for them to please share with me the examples of progress they’ve seen. If the meeting starts with a litany of concerns about Chee, I will probably get very depressed. In the interest of positive mood preservation, we must start (and end) with the positive.
As for the areas of concern, I still see progress there. She is less echolalic than she was when she started preschool six months ago, although she is definitely still echolalic. As for peer interaction – it’s obvious she desperately wants to play with her peers and interact with them. Just this week the speech therapist from school shared a positive story of how she maintained appropriate peer interaction with another child without adult support. As for the episodes of anxious behavior, well, I don’t see that, so I’m relying on them to give me examples. I don’t see her being anxious at home or anywhere else we go. Unless I don’t know what anxiety looks like.
I knew that as this meeting approached I’d start to be sick with worry. Worry that all the progress I’m seeing isn’t real, it’s just imagined, that my Chee is simply not measuring up. I find myself tempering my enthusiasm about her development with a guarded so-called realism that says, Don’t get too confident, she’s still behind… If I could insert an eye-rolling emoticon here, I would. Why should I be guarded? I’m her mother, for Pete’s sake, there should be no one more enthusiastic than me. The truth is that I don’t want to go into school tomorrow and have my hopes dashed.
Into self-lecture mode I go now. Development is not a race. And if it were a race, it would be a marathon and not a sprint. The 10 hours a week they spend with Chee provides only a snapshot of who she is and how she’s developing. Ultimately Mama knows best. And no matter what they tell me tomorrow, it won’t change the truth of all the development that I have seen.
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Language Development
Here are just a couple of examples of great language development that we are seeing with Chee. First, she speaks in first person the majority of the time now. She came home with a lovely water color of a daffodil she had painted and I asked her, What is this? and she immediately responded, I painted that. It’s a daffodil. Last time she came with a painting and I asked her what it is, I received only a one-word response. Daffodil. (I guess she likes to paint daffodils.)
Today I asked her if she used the potty at school and she said, No, I went at home. True, she had just used the potty here at home.
And it’s not just the first-person language I’m hearing. She’s telling stories about her day. She asking questions of us. She’s talking back to the television, Oh no, (Curious) George, be careful! It’s all beautiful.
One of my favorites happened yesterday. One of Chee’s favorite things to do is look for cards I hide around the house with instructions on where to find the next card. We did that yesterday and she just loves it. Then I thought to try a Scavenger Hunt so I made a list of items for her to find around the house. I handed it to her and she read it and then said, Mommy, it’s not a place. Smart girl – she was expecting more directions, and she communicated appropriately.
Typing all this does something for me. It helps ease the anxiety. No matter how the conference goes tomorrow, no matter what their perception of Chee is, it doesn’t change anything. Chee is Chee. And she’s doing better than awesome. I couldn’t be happier. And neither could she.
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