The Power of Yes is this week's new discovery in Small Boy Land. It's a little thing, but it makes me smile greatly. Within a few days the answer to "Would you like a sandwich?" has gone from
"Like a sandwich
to
"Yes, like a sandwich"
to just
"YES!"
He pronounces it with great relish, and is clearly very impressed with his new discovery. It's versatile! It's efficient! It decreases the number of words he has to produce to get his message across! Win - win - win.
Inconveniently, however, it does come at just the time when I'd realised I could use his echolalia to promote good manners. I was formerly having some success in prompting "Like a sandwich please mumma?". Now that conversation is going something like this:
"Sandwich!"
"Sandwich please mumma?".
"YES!"
Small price to pay. With that big grin on his face, how could I deny him?
Monday 29 August 2011
Monday 22 August 2011
Big Sister - Junior therapist
I definitely haven't written enough here about the awesomeness that is the Taller Girl. The Taller Girl is four years older than her little brother, and, at seven, is old enough to understand that there's something 'different' about him.
She is incredibly protective of him - sometimes a little too protective in fact. At playgrounds, she will intercept small kids bounding up to him with "what's your name" or complicated instructions on correct playing of whatever game is currently taking over the playground, and act as his barricade. "He doesn't understand you. He doesn't talk." No longer quite true, as it happens (although he's still more than usually quiet, particularly outside the family) and I have to encourage her to have a more optimistic view of his abilities. Under the best of circumstances, a seven year old is always going to take a rather superior view of the abilities of a three year old brother!
But the most valuable thing she does is play, play, play with him. The Smaller Girl also plays with him, but generally by playing down to his level. The Smaller Girl is a big bouncer, squealer and runner-about - these things are certainly very attractive to His Shortness, and they can happily bounce squeal and run about together all afternoon (or until accidental grevious bodily harm is inflicted one upon the other, and we experience a different type of squealing). When the Taller Girl plays, she extends him.
Last week she was home for two days with conjunctivitis - enough to exclude her from school, but not exactly sick. So they drew. Her drawing is, of course, far advanced of his, but not so far advanced that he can't appreciate and aspire to the level she's at. He drew trees - she drew trees too, but with branches. An interesting new development. Now he can do branches too - fat boxy affairs, scaffolded (of course) with dots. She drew fishes. So he wanted to draw some fishes too (which sadly proved a little hard, so we ended up with 'mumma draw a green fish!'. But the attempt was there). Currently he's decided that eggs are what he's drawing this week. I can understand the attraction - they're really easy to get right.
And while all that was going on, I did the dishes. That's valuable too.
She is incredibly protective of him - sometimes a little too protective in fact. At playgrounds, she will intercept small kids bounding up to him with "what's your name" or complicated instructions on correct playing of whatever game is currently taking over the playground, and act as his barricade. "He doesn't understand you. He doesn't talk." No longer quite true, as it happens (although he's still more than usually quiet, particularly outside the family) and I have to encourage her to have a more optimistic view of his abilities. Under the best of circumstances, a seven year old is always going to take a rather superior view of the abilities of a three year old brother!
But the most valuable thing she does is play, play, play with him. The Smaller Girl also plays with him, but generally by playing down to his level. The Smaller Girl is a big bouncer, squealer and runner-about - these things are certainly very attractive to His Shortness, and they can happily bounce squeal and run about together all afternoon (or until accidental grevious bodily harm is inflicted one upon the other, and we experience a different type of squealing). When the Taller Girl plays, she extends him.
Last week she was home for two days with conjunctivitis - enough to exclude her from school, but not exactly sick. So they drew. Her drawing is, of course, far advanced of his, but not so far advanced that he can't appreciate and aspire to the level she's at. He drew trees - she drew trees too, but with branches. An interesting new development. Now he can do branches too - fat boxy affairs, scaffolded (of course) with dots. She drew fishes. So he wanted to draw some fishes too (which sadly proved a little hard, so we ended up with 'mumma draw a green fish!'. But the attempt was there). Currently he's decided that eggs are what he's drawing this week. I can understand the attraction - they're really easy to get right.
And while all that was going on, I did the dishes. That's valuable too.
Monday 15 August 2011
In Praise of Dots
Occupational Therapists are great. This is what we learnt from our OT a couple of visits ago:
One dot on the page. Dot to the right. Dot below. Dot to the left. What does that make?
Across...down...across...up...a square!
Another dot on the page. Dot below. Another dot below. Down...across...up...a triangle!
The Small Boy has been having a lot of trouble with the concept of drawing. He likes in in theory. But then he gets that pen on the paper, and his perfectionist nature rears its ugly head, roadblocking him. He draws a line and it's not right!. Tears, and a piece of paper is flung away. Next paper. Another line. Not Right!
Dots are calming, dots are soothing, dots help him to stay in control. The line that he draws from one dot to another may be exceedingly wobbly - it may even not hit the target dot. But that's okay. As long as he has another dot to aim for, he can handle this.
After we learnt the square/triangle/diamond exercise, I started extending him. First we did square inside a square. Then circles (lots of dots). Then for a couple of weeks we were doing aeroplanes. I'd do the dots, we'd join them up together (hand over hand). With the more complicated figures, he seemed to have not quite so much confidence to do it all himself (and in any case Mummy Help is always appreciated).
Then a few days ago he was in the kitchen by himself for about half an hour beavering away, and when I finally came in I discovered he'd created this:
http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
They're trees. Big rectangle with dots for the trunk, more dots for leaves on top, and "two eyes a nose and a mouth". I believe they're probably based on the Mean Stuff-Stealing trees from Pyjama Sam
Oh, and he used the kid scissors to cut them out entirely by himself too.
Did I mention I like dots?
One dot on the page. Dot to the right. Dot below. Dot to the left. What does that make?
Across...down...across...up...a square!
Another dot on the page. Dot below. Another dot below. Down...across...up...a triangle!
The Small Boy has been having a lot of trouble with the concept of drawing. He likes in in theory. But then he gets that pen on the paper, and his perfectionist nature rears its ugly head, roadblocking him. He draws a line and it's not right!. Tears, and a piece of paper is flung away. Next paper. Another line. Not Right!
Dots are calming, dots are soothing, dots help him to stay in control. The line that he draws from one dot to another may be exceedingly wobbly - it may even not hit the target dot. But that's okay. As long as he has another dot to aim for, he can handle this.
After we learnt the square/triangle/diamond exercise, I started extending him. First we did square inside a square. Then circles (lots of dots). Then for a couple of weeks we were doing aeroplanes. I'd do the dots, we'd join them up together (hand over hand). With the more complicated figures, he seemed to have not quite so much confidence to do it all himself (and in any case Mummy Help is always appreciated).
Then a few days ago he was in the kitchen by himself for about half an hour beavering away, and when I finally came in I discovered he'd created this:
http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
They're trees. Big rectangle with dots for the trunk, more dots for leaves on top, and "two eyes a nose and a mouth". I believe they're probably based on the Mean Stuff-Stealing trees from Pyjama Sam
Oh, and he used the kid scissors to cut them out entirely by himself too.
Did I mention I like dots?
Monday 8 August 2011
Auditory Processing Fail?
I have recently realised something about auditory processing. Apparently, I'm kind of crap at it.Perhaps.
This links back to a longstanding ... mmm ... difference of opinion between myself and the Spouse over my "not listening" to things. As in, we're sitting down side by side at our respective his 'n hers computers, me watching iView and him playing WoW and chatting away to his guildies. And then he'll say:
"mmmbl mmmblbl mm mmm mbl"
And I'll say:
"..."
Because, of course, I'm watching my program. I don't know what he's said to me. I'm barely even aware words came out of his mouth. In fact, I've always considered it extremely weird that he would expect that I would automatically know that he just said something to me (as opposed to the guildies) - obviously I can't be listening to him at the same time as listening to my TV program. You can't be listening to two things at once, can you?
Can you?
Well apparently, according to a big involved conversation we had on this topic, you can. Or at least I can't but maybe you can.
Apparently, all this time when we've been pursuing our respective evening's entertainments, the Spouse has been chatting with his guildies AND listening to my program AND processing the content of both of these AT THE SAME TIME!
Frankly, this blew me away. I would never have remotely considered that this would be possible. When I'm listening to a thing, I'm listening to ONE thing. My ears are totally tuned to that. Other noise doesn't even register. And if I'm not actively listening to something, I'm not in processing mode at all. Come and say something to me out of the blue and you'll have to wait for the system to boot up before you'll get any meaningful answer.
The question then arises of course - who's normal and who's weird? Am I unusually crap at this task, or is he unusually good?
I was online recently with a person who really does have full-on auditory processing disorder. From his account, he has the worst of both worlds. He can't filter out an auditory input to effective non-existance, but he also can't process more than one at the same time. So multiple people talking at once leaves him with a confused meaningless jumble, nothing to catch hold of.
Which brings us back (of course) to the Small Boy. Is this possibly the source of his language difficulties? Has he inherited neither his dad's ability to process multiple sound channels at once nor his mum's ability to switch focus and filter out the excess?
Complicating this also is the fact that I'm not sure that what I do with filtering sound is really the sort of thing you inherit. It's more a sort of trick I've picked up to make sound more manageable. Problem - I've no real idea how exactly I do it. I've no idea how or when I learnt to do it. I've no idea how to teach it to someone else.
This links back to a longstanding ... mmm ... difference of opinion between myself and the Spouse over my "not listening" to things. As in, we're sitting down side by side at our respective his 'n hers computers, me watching iView and him playing WoW and chatting away to his guildies. And then he'll say:
"mmmbl mmmblbl mm mmm mbl"
And I'll say:
"..."
Because, of course, I'm watching my program. I don't know what he's said to me. I'm barely even aware words came out of his mouth. In fact, I've always considered it extremely weird that he would expect that I would automatically know that he just said something to me (as opposed to the guildies) - obviously I can't be listening to him at the same time as listening to my TV program. You can't be listening to two things at once, can you?
Can you?
Well apparently, according to a big involved conversation we had on this topic, you can. Or at least I can't but maybe you can.
Apparently, all this time when we've been pursuing our respective evening's entertainments, the Spouse has been chatting with his guildies AND listening to my program AND processing the content of both of these AT THE SAME TIME!
Frankly, this blew me away. I would never have remotely considered that this would be possible. When I'm listening to a thing, I'm listening to ONE thing. My ears are totally tuned to that. Other noise doesn't even register. And if I'm not actively listening to something, I'm not in processing mode at all. Come and say something to me out of the blue and you'll have to wait for the system to boot up before you'll get any meaningful answer.
The question then arises of course - who's normal and who's weird? Am I unusually crap at this task, or is he unusually good?
I was online recently with a person who really does have full-on auditory processing disorder. From his account, he has the worst of both worlds. He can't filter out an auditory input to effective non-existance, but he also can't process more than one at the same time. So multiple people talking at once leaves him with a confused meaningless jumble, nothing to catch hold of.
Which brings us back (of course) to the Small Boy. Is this possibly the source of his language difficulties? Has he inherited neither his dad's ability to process multiple sound channels at once nor his mum's ability to switch focus and filter out the excess?
Complicating this also is the fact that I'm not sure that what I do with filtering sound is really the sort of thing you inherit. It's more a sort of trick I've picked up to make sound more manageable. Problem - I've no real idea how exactly I do it. I've no idea how or when I learnt to do it. I've no idea how to teach it to someone else.
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