Being smart...
...and posting current things before I fall even further behind, trying to get down all the older stuff. (We'll see how long it lasts this time.)
On Tuesday, the Jamie-highlight involved impersonating tree frogs with him. It proved especially hilarious to him when I pretended to have a long, sticky tongue that shot out to grab imaginary bugs off his face. (Sticking tongue out, with that movement continued by a wet fingertip darting out the rest of the way. I wasn't licking my kid, honest.)
On Wednesday, the Jamie-highlight was: "Wow...dat's so pwetty! Mommy nails are SPARKLES colow!" -- Jamie See, I had painted my nails a deep red fading to gold, for Shaun and Liz's Autumn wedding. At first Jamie freaked, since it was not only a change, it was a change attached to mommy! Besides, he hadn't really gotten a good look at nail-polish in over a year, since his old S.T., since I hadn't been able to find my box of non-basic cosmetics, or managed to have 10 fingernails of a decently paintable length, all at once, for quite some time. Well eniways, as predicted, once he adjusted, he loved them. I mean, they were colorful and shiny! And once that chipped off, he was disappointed, and asked me to, "Make [my] nails colows again." So, Tues. night I painted them again, going for a clear with iridescent sparkles this time. I had a feeling he'd like that. :-) Later in the day, he grabbed my hand, and tilted it back and forth, back and forth, back and forth again, watching the light play on the glitter. "Iss da beautifuw sparkles!" he said.
Today (Thurs.)....now that's been an excellent day with more than one highlight to it. Keainid was off, and I got to sleep in rather late, then shower, then eat brunch. We took Jamie to the library, and I started collecting pretty Autumn leaves along the way. Jamie was very good while we were there, (where I also picked up another few books and movies for him and another book for me), and didn't make a big fuss when they were closing and it was time to leave, despite the cranky vibes coming from a new-to-us and perhaps new-in-general librarian who was more than a little bit over-tense for (and about) the job. On the way home, we stopped at the playground, where over the course of an hour, Jamie caught up on two years' worth of gross motor play development, or at least a nice chunk of it.* When at last approaching home through the twilight, we saw one of the local deer. (The bad news is that a large dead tree is now completely blocking -- to a human -- the entrance to the little pocket of woods in the park next door, which will make it harder to take up our twilight-in-the-Autumn tradition of going to watch the deer family feast on fallen crab-apples in the clearing.) Once home, Jamie spent some time looking at his new books, and I changed into something warm and cozy and then sorted more clothes to give away out of his seasons-changing wardrobe, until his bedtime. That went fairly smoothly, and ended well a Jamie-day in which he never earned any TimeOuts from either of us, and only came close twice that we can think of.** Tonight's project is making a few days' worth of my yummy homemade dumplings, although we'll probably just eat the meat that's leftover after we run out of wonton wrappers, for dinner. And after that...it depends on how many spoons I have left. Maybe some reading, at the least.
* Man, the one time you forget to bring your camera... ::shakes head:: Today's playgrounding was just made of awesome. Ok, slightly less awesome than if we'd been able to stay longer, for lack of it getting cold and mosquito-y, because Jamie sure was on a roll, and who knows how much else he would've done, if we'd stayed. All the same, it was pretty momentous. Ok, here's....the context of Jamie's development and playgrounds, for a start. He's mostly stopped being interested in baby swings, recently -- probably because he's gotten good enough at being on the "big boy swings" that he can still get a decent swing out of it. He has done very rudimentary sand play, which might develop once he spends more time playing in our own sandbox. Our current closest playground doesn't have sand, but has wood chips..he likes "cleaning" the equipment by taking any stray wood chips (which are generally thick-splinter-shaped) and fitting them through the little holes in the steps/platforms to drop them down to the ground where they belong. A few residences ago, the playground had one of those wooden slat half arches, and he ONCE even began trying to climb up that, but only sort of halfway made it from the ground to the top of that first thin slat. He made it completely up a more daunting one-step of climbing on the cage thinger next door that isn't there any more, last Winter. This Spring he made a few attempts for daddy at climbing a little on those rope "webs"...mostly the largely-horizontal one. .....You know what, I probably shouldn't keep putting all that here. Ok, not going to finish, though I'm not going to erase what I already put here either. But now, let's just deal with the current playground, usually called "Red Blue Yellow" because that's the color scheme. He used to ask for the baby swings as a matter of course, but the last few times didn't bother....sometimes he does use the big swings (with help to get on, though he can get off on his own, and he needs to be pushed), sometimes he likes to follow up on that, if he's getting tired, by swinging sitting (usually straddling, so he can snuggle) a lap. He does the wood chip thing. He crawls through the wire mesh tunnel. He walks around all the rest of the equipment and considers it. Most of it he's never been willing to experiment with even once. There are these wigglywobbly disk "steps" on ropes -- you're supposed to hang on and manage to step from one to the next, as they wobble all over, which is, honestly, tricky even for an adult -- and sometimes he steps up on one, then immediately asks for help to get down. And until now, that's really been about it. Far less than your typical four year old is doing on an elaborate playground such as this one is.
We're always trying to get him to use the slides, since it's great for vestibular, proprioceptive and tactile input. There have been brief pockets of time, over the years, when he was willing to...very happy to...interact with slides. Usually, if he's been willing to go down one, it's been on my lap, facing in one or the other direction. More rarely, he was willing to go down with one parent (usually daddy) getting him up there to the top, and then into position and going down, and the other parent (usually mommy) at the bottom to smooth his descent and "catch him" at the end. Most times, though, we can't even get him to the top of the slide, either because he doesn't think he wants to slide, or he doesn't want to deal with whatever version of steps lead up to it...even now, though he's been rocking stairs, up and down, on his own, since we moved into this last place. Well today....today, things changed. We were hoping to get him to try out the slide. We didn't have a lot of hope, because he was very resistant to going up the steps to the top, even with parental accompaniment/aid. I'm really not sure why he's so resistant to those steps in particular. Eniways, I went up to the top, hoping that "come to mommy" would prove encouraging enough. It was at first, but he only made it part-way before not wanting to deal with it any more, so Keainid just handed him up to me. He was willing to try the slide, so I got him into position at the top of the slide on his butt, Keainid went to the bottom, and I gently pushed Jamie down. He reached the bottom pretty much having had daddy's hands on him, guiding a slow descent, the whole time. He had fun. We went another round the same way. Then, the most surprising of the sudden progressions began. There are several ways up to the slide platform -- there are the stairs, there's a fire-house-style pole (well, that's more for getting down), there's a pretty much straight vertical ladder of poles with somewhat curved rungs, and there's the same sort of thing, except it's more of an arch. Well Jamie was interested in trying to climb up that last one.
Jamie started with pretty much being helped by daddy up/over every step, and being pulled to me, by me, before he quite made it to the end. It was slow going, as you might imagine. There are pretty big spaces between the rungs, his feet are big enough to get good footing, but getting the aim right to place his feet and to keep them where they need to be without slipping, would probably be easier with larger feet, and possibly sneakers with flatter soles. Plus, you know, he's totally not used to it. Then there's the arm strength for pulling himself up. And, of course, there's the coordination issue. Also, because the angle of the thing changes, what he's doing with his body to move across it, has to change. All very tricky, all the more so since he was basically starting with almost none of the foundational skills or experience. But after a few times doing things that way, he needed daddy less for help, more for a touch of balance security and the occasional spotting when something slipped. He got better about adjusting his grip, foot placement and positioning in general, so as to manage whatever the next step was. He decided that using his knees instead of his feet would be easier, and tried that out for a while, getting better at other elements while doing that, before switching back to feet. He made it pretty much to the end before I helped him onto the platform and into a hug. Then, the next step. He needed daddy barely at all. And he not only went up rather smoothly and quickly just with his hands and feet, but he did so mostly upright (as upright as you could get while still bending to use handholds), instead of sort-of-crawling over the thing. I wouldn't grab him until he'd made the complete transition from the ladder to standing on the platform. The gross motor development, and his confidence, was soaring. By the time we took him home, he was trying to buy time by running away from the stroller and trying to go back and do it again entirely on his own. We still spotted him, but it was pretty much solo, that last time.
The other element of this, of course, was the use of the slide itself. I got him to the point where he could sit himself down in position, and give himself a push to begin sliding down. He got to the point of doing it with no one at the bottom. He did it on his butt facing forward, and he also decided to start doing it feet-first but on his stomach. He did a countdown and "blasted off" at the end...all his idea. He has yet to figure out how to climb UP a slide, but otherwise I'd say he pretty much mastered the slide today, too.
All this over a little less than an hour, mind you. It's times like this that I think about the theory that if a child (special-needs or otherwise) isn't ready for a skill, they aren't going to master it no matter how much you work on it...and if they are ready, they are going to "get it" very quickly, whether or not you've been working towards it. As long as you provide and encourage the opportunities, most things will fall into place on their own. Of course, there's no saying that Jamie won't regress in any of this. The sensory disorder almost guarantees that. Still, this was amazing.
He also did his first playing with fallen leaves of the season. Totally on his own. Another two-firsts-in-one, on that account.
** Both times related to him recognizing that he would not be able to handle watching videos, and freaking out about it disproportionately. The first time, Keainid had already turned on Qubo (a young children's programming station that unfortunately recently removed several of the few shows we'd gotten him to test out that he'd particularly liked) before getting him from his crib in the morning, because if we decide to make use of some TV programming in one of his days, here and there, that's really the only way to do it. Jamie made it immediately clear that he wanted and needed it turned off, but before Keainid made it that far, Jamie saw that Maisy Mouse was on. That's a favorite of his -- he really likes the simplicity of it, we figure. This was an episode he'd seen before, and apparently he liked it enough that he was able to overrule, consciously or unconsciously, the sensory spazz. Interesting. So he happily watched that one show, and as soon as it was over, once again requested (slightly more calmly) that things be turned off. The second near-TimeOut happened shortly before our trip to the library, when I realized one of the videos we had to return was a VHS I hadn't finished rewinding (because he hadn't been able to handle the noise of doing so, halfway through doing so, at that point in time) -- I moved to turn on the power strip that controls the whole entertainment center, turn on the VCR, and....with tape in hand of course....put it in so I could rewind it. The TV was still completely off, but Jamie began short-circuiting like crazy at the thought that I was (seemingly so) going to put on a video for him.
On Tuesday, the Jamie-highlight involved impersonating tree frogs with him. It proved especially hilarious to him when I pretended to have a long, sticky tongue that shot out to grab imaginary bugs off his face. (Sticking tongue out, with that movement continued by a wet fingertip darting out the rest of the way. I wasn't licking my kid, honest.)
On Wednesday, the Jamie-highlight was: "Wow...dat's so pwetty! Mommy nails are SPARKLES colow!" -- Jamie See, I had painted my nails a deep red fading to gold, for Shaun and Liz's Autumn wedding. At first Jamie freaked, since it was not only a change, it was a change attached to mommy! Besides, he hadn't really gotten a good look at nail-polish in over a year, since his old S.T., since I hadn't been able to find my box of non-basic cosmetics, or managed to have 10 fingernails of a decently paintable length, all at once, for quite some time. Well eniways, as predicted, once he adjusted, he loved them. I mean, they were colorful and shiny! And once that chipped off, he was disappointed, and asked me to, "Make [my] nails colows again." So, Tues. night I painted them again, going for a clear with iridescent sparkles this time. I had a feeling he'd like that. :-) Later in the day, he grabbed my hand, and tilted it back and forth, back and forth, back and forth again, watching the light play on the glitter. "Iss da beautifuw sparkles!" he said.
Today (Thurs.)....now that's been an excellent day with more than one highlight to it. Keainid was off, and I got to sleep in rather late, then shower, then eat brunch. We took Jamie to the library, and I started collecting pretty Autumn leaves along the way. Jamie was very good while we were there, (where I also picked up another few books and movies for him and another book for me), and didn't make a big fuss when they were closing and it was time to leave, despite the cranky vibes coming from a new-to-us and perhaps new-in-general librarian who was more than a little bit over-tense for (and about) the job. On the way home, we stopped at the playground, where over the course of an hour, Jamie caught up on two years' worth of gross motor play development, or at least a nice chunk of it.* When at last approaching home through the twilight, we saw one of the local deer. (The bad news is that a large dead tree is now completely blocking -- to a human -- the entrance to the little pocket of woods in the park next door, which will make it harder to take up our twilight-in-the-Autumn tradition of going to watch the deer family feast on fallen crab-apples in the clearing.) Once home, Jamie spent some time looking at his new books, and I changed into something warm and cozy and then sorted more clothes to give away out of his seasons-changing wardrobe, until his bedtime. That went fairly smoothly, and ended well a Jamie-day in which he never earned any TimeOuts from either of us, and only came close twice that we can think of.** Tonight's project is making a few days' worth of my yummy homemade dumplings, although we'll probably just eat the meat that's leftover after we run out of wonton wrappers, for dinner. And after that...it depends on how many spoons I have left. Maybe some reading, at the least.
* Man, the one time you forget to bring your camera... ::shakes head:: Today's playgrounding was just made of awesome. Ok, slightly less awesome than if we'd been able to stay longer, for lack of it getting cold and mosquito-y, because Jamie sure was on a roll, and who knows how much else he would've done, if we'd stayed. All the same, it was pretty momentous. Ok, here's....the context of Jamie's development and playgrounds, for a start. He's mostly stopped being interested in baby swings, recently -- probably because he's gotten good enough at being on the "big boy swings" that he can still get a decent swing out of it. He has done very rudimentary sand play, which might develop once he spends more time playing in our own sandbox. Our current closest playground doesn't have sand, but has wood chips..he likes "cleaning" the equipment by taking any stray wood chips (which are generally thick-splinter-shaped) and fitting them through the little holes in the steps/platforms to drop them down to the ground where they belong. A few residences ago, the playground had one of those wooden slat half arches, and he ONCE even began trying to climb up that, but only sort of halfway made it from the ground to the top of that first thin slat. He made it completely up a more daunting one-step of climbing on the cage thinger next door that isn't there any more, last Winter. This Spring he made a few attempts for daddy at climbing a little on those rope "webs"...mostly the largely-horizontal one. .....You know what, I probably shouldn't keep putting all that here. Ok, not going to finish, though I'm not going to erase what I already put here either. But now, let's just deal with the current playground, usually called "Red Blue Yellow" because that's the color scheme. He used to ask for the baby swings as a matter of course, but the last few times didn't bother....sometimes he does use the big swings (with help to get on, though he can get off on his own, and he needs to be pushed), sometimes he likes to follow up on that, if he's getting tired, by swinging sitting (usually straddling, so he can snuggle) a lap. He does the wood chip thing. He crawls through the wire mesh tunnel. He walks around all the rest of the equipment and considers it. Most of it he's never been willing to experiment with even once. There are these wigglywobbly disk "steps" on ropes -- you're supposed to hang on and manage to step from one to the next, as they wobble all over, which is, honestly, tricky even for an adult -- and sometimes he steps up on one, then immediately asks for help to get down. And until now, that's really been about it. Far less than your typical four year old is doing on an elaborate playground such as this one is.
We're always trying to get him to use the slides, since it's great for vestibular, proprioceptive and tactile input. There have been brief pockets of time, over the years, when he was willing to...very happy to...interact with slides. Usually, if he's been willing to go down one, it's been on my lap, facing in one or the other direction. More rarely, he was willing to go down with one parent (usually daddy) getting him up there to the top, and then into position and going down, and the other parent (usually mommy) at the bottom to smooth his descent and "catch him" at the end. Most times, though, we can't even get him to the top of the slide, either because he doesn't think he wants to slide, or he doesn't want to deal with whatever version of steps lead up to it...even now, though he's been rocking stairs, up and down, on his own, since we moved into this last place. Well today....today, things changed. We were hoping to get him to try out the slide. We didn't have a lot of hope, because he was very resistant to going up the steps to the top, even with parental accompaniment/aid. I'm really not sure why he's so resistant to those steps in particular. Eniways, I went up to the top, hoping that "come to mommy" would prove encouraging enough. It was at first, but he only made it part-way before not wanting to deal with it any more, so Keainid just handed him up to me. He was willing to try the slide, so I got him into position at the top of the slide on his butt, Keainid went to the bottom, and I gently pushed Jamie down. He reached the bottom pretty much having had daddy's hands on him, guiding a slow descent, the whole time. He had fun. We went another round the same way. Then, the most surprising of the sudden progressions began. There are several ways up to the slide platform -- there are the stairs, there's a fire-house-style pole (well, that's more for getting down), there's a pretty much straight vertical ladder of poles with somewhat curved rungs, and there's the same sort of thing, except it's more of an arch. Well Jamie was interested in trying to climb up that last one.
Jamie started with pretty much being helped by daddy up/over every step, and being pulled to me, by me, before he quite made it to the end. It was slow going, as you might imagine. There are pretty big spaces between the rungs, his feet are big enough to get good footing, but getting the aim right to place his feet and to keep them where they need to be without slipping, would probably be easier with larger feet, and possibly sneakers with flatter soles. Plus, you know, he's totally not used to it. Then there's the arm strength for pulling himself up. And, of course, there's the coordination issue. Also, because the angle of the thing changes, what he's doing with his body to move across it, has to change. All very tricky, all the more so since he was basically starting with almost none of the foundational skills or experience. But after a few times doing things that way, he needed daddy less for help, more for a touch of balance security and the occasional spotting when something slipped. He got better about adjusting his grip, foot placement and positioning in general, so as to manage whatever the next step was. He decided that using his knees instead of his feet would be easier, and tried that out for a while, getting better at other elements while doing that, before switching back to feet. He made it pretty much to the end before I helped him onto the platform and into a hug. Then, the next step. He needed daddy barely at all. And he not only went up rather smoothly and quickly just with his hands and feet, but he did so mostly upright (as upright as you could get while still bending to use handholds), instead of sort-of-crawling over the thing. I wouldn't grab him until he'd made the complete transition from the ladder to standing on the platform. The gross motor development, and his confidence, was soaring. By the time we took him home, he was trying to buy time by running away from the stroller and trying to go back and do it again entirely on his own. We still spotted him, but it was pretty much solo, that last time.
The other element of this, of course, was the use of the slide itself. I got him to the point where he could sit himself down in position, and give himself a push to begin sliding down. He got to the point of doing it with no one at the bottom. He did it on his butt facing forward, and he also decided to start doing it feet-first but on his stomach. He did a countdown and "blasted off" at the end...all his idea. He has yet to figure out how to climb UP a slide, but otherwise I'd say he pretty much mastered the slide today, too.
All this over a little less than an hour, mind you. It's times like this that I think about the theory that if a child (special-needs or otherwise) isn't ready for a skill, they aren't going to master it no matter how much you work on it...and if they are ready, they are going to "get it" very quickly, whether or not you've been working towards it. As long as you provide and encourage the opportunities, most things will fall into place on their own. Of course, there's no saying that Jamie won't regress in any of this. The sensory disorder almost guarantees that. Still, this was amazing.
He also did his first playing with fallen leaves of the season. Totally on his own. Another two-firsts-in-one, on that account.
** Both times related to him recognizing that he would not be able to handle watching videos, and freaking out about it disproportionately. The first time, Keainid had already turned on Qubo (a young children's programming station that unfortunately recently removed several of the few shows we'd gotten him to test out that he'd particularly liked) before getting him from his crib in the morning, because if we decide to make use of some TV programming in one of his days, here and there, that's really the only way to do it. Jamie made it immediately clear that he wanted and needed it turned off, but before Keainid made it that far, Jamie saw that Maisy Mouse was on. That's a favorite of his -- he really likes the simplicity of it, we figure. This was an episode he'd seen before, and apparently he liked it enough that he was able to overrule, consciously or unconsciously, the sensory spazz. Interesting. So he happily watched that one show, and as soon as it was over, once again requested (slightly more calmly) that things be turned off. The second near-TimeOut happened shortly before our trip to the library, when I realized one of the videos we had to return was a VHS I hadn't finished rewinding (because he hadn't been able to handle the noise of doing so, halfway through doing so, at that point in time) -- I moved to turn on the power strip that controls the whole entertainment center, turn on the VCR, and....with tape in hand of course....put it in so I could rewind it. The TV was still completely off, but Jamie began short-circuiting like crazy at the thought that I was (seemingly so) going to put on a video for him.