Monday

Egads! (in a very fake British accent) I am so far behind and in no way working up to capacity. Still feel like I am trudging along with energy or purpose. And so, I had a talk with myself this weekend -- I can be hard to talk to. LOL.

We rode past a soccer field yesterday where kids and parents were getting ready for practice and/or games. I can't help but be reminded at how far Julia is from doing something like that. Should I be looking into sports for kids with challenges? Do they have such things? I felt the tug from the part of me that is still caught wanting normalcy -- wanting soccer games or dancing school instead of therapy and controlled visits. Wanting some freedom, not from my girl, but with my girl. There are days I feel we live in a bubble of our own construction, living somewhat parellel to those who we observe.

But in this bubble there is some joy. Certainly. Yesterday, this idea of reading family words (as in, hat, fat, cat, rat, etc.) clicked inside of her. We went through as many -at words as I could imagine and Julia got it! She can sound out the first letter and then put it together with the -at end. Slowly, but doing it. We are moving towards reading.

The other thing we worked on yesterday was to write four sentences about ants (her current passion), tape the writing sheet on a bigger piece of drawing paper and then draw on the rest of the bigger sheet. The drawing, however, must be about ants. This was not easy for Julia -- she crumbled up the paper once and had lots of harsh words for me, but what I want to try doing is to focus her on one topic at a time. She will have/does have plenty of opportunities to draw and work with clay but I want to channel some of this creative energy to a specific topic.

One idea I have is to work on weekly or biweekly themse during the summer. Things like dinosaurs, bugs, dogs. Scient content if I can manage it but with a creative edge for her to hook into. Always writing first and then drawing and learning the discipline to draw on topic, even if it is tangential. I don't think this is too challenging for her but I will find out.

And later on Saturday

Julia is in the living room with headphones on listening to her therapy music, making blue and pink dinosaurs with palm trees out of new play dough. She started a new session of swimming classes and we re-started our home work tonight. And I have questions.

The first about swimming. Julia has done the same class, polliwogs, three times now. She is incredibly able in the water and she can do all of what is expected to pass on to the next class. However, she does not follow directions. So, she will not do what she is told when she is told. She can kick to the other end of the pool but would rather not do it when the class does. My original plan, which might be incredibly naive, was to have her repeat the first class until she was able to attend to what the teacher was saying and listen. I have no investment in her moving ahead, but I am now wondering if I should be burdening the beginner teachers with her behavior, as if they are going to change it? My expectations are confused.

My confusion arises right now because she has a new teacher. Previously, she had had the same guy, Allen, and he was getting somewhere with her. He also knew how to handle her. Julia's new teacher, Linda, is a SN teacher but . . . . I just don't know, my gut tells me nothing, and I am not sure of who to ask. This question also feeds into a more general question about activities and Julia. There is a young kids choir at the church. Can I impose on the director and see if she can join?

Before dinner, Julia and I started our home work again. We did letter work during out vacation, but for the week afterwards and for this past first week of school, I did not demand that we sit down and work. We did a bit of alphabet saying and signing, and some informal spelling, but that was it. Yesterday, we sat down and worked on her name and some coloring. I thought we would ease into working.

I decided to try to work on simple words following the starfall.com process. She still needs reinforcement with letters and sounds, but I am hoping that the letter work will come using words. She wrote her name; she worked on "a", "t", and then "at". This was pretty unconcrete and she gave me some resistance. We read the little book, "Zac the Rat." (fascinating reading!) We went to the computer and did the "AT" exercises and the "AN" exercises, and then, did two work sheets that had pictures next to half written words. In the first sheet, she had to fill in the first letter of the word and trace the remaining two letters, the second sheet, she had to fill in the "a" for each word. Julia worked diligently with a lot of help from me to keep her focused and moving along.

I have 6 sheets that work on short "a". I plan to run through the set twice at least to see if she gets it. At the same time, we will continue to read Zac the Rat every day and sometimes at bedtime.

Once again, no idea of what I am doing, but feeling my way to the next step.

Another note, at one point when we were working, Julia started saying that she was scared of the letters, that the work was too hard and that it scared her. I put her in my lap and we hugged eachother to get the scareds out. Then she went back to work.

Oh, if I could only get inside her head!! Now, to take a picture of her dinos and palm trees.

Last day of camp

So this is not such a great photo but it's what I got and it is the last day of camp! Like every other day the last 6 weeks, Julia came home hungry and in a great mood. We didn't get any anxious phone calls or any complaints apart from an occasional word that she didn't feel well on the bus. I watched Julia try to socialize many days as we waited for the bus and by the end, some of the other kids would talk to her or answer her questions. Still, she has a long way to go to really fit in with kids. Julia has such spirit and such endurance. I admire this about her and sometimes wish I could I could borrow some of her spirit.
So, a little better picture. And doesn't she look happy.

Julia and I worked tonight. She was able to work for an hour and work through a rough patch about connecting dots. Oh, connecting the dots. I think we are into a battle of wills. I am trying to teach her this skill, and not doing such a good job. I went from trying to get her to go from a dot labeled with the alphabet to two dots that I wanted her to draw a line to connect. At some point she absolutely refused to do it, but in the nicest way possible. "It hard." "I no want do this." "No thank you." We tried on paper and then on the magna-doodle. I explained every part of the task; I demonstrated; and she did not want to do it. I got close to very frustrated and angry, but held it back and drew BIG dots to connect. She finally did it and then did it thre more times. Hopefully, we can move to labeled dots very soon.

She did do wondefully as we worked on the alphabet. We did our putnik cheers; she wrote letterw when I made signs, and I again tried to point out letters and have her make the sound. She is getting better at separating the putnik cheer and giving me the part of it that I am asking for. We also did the "an" page on starfall.com. It is the very beginning of learning to read and we got through the first page very successfully. Julia put the c, p, r, and another letter in front of the AN and made the words to match the pictures. I was surprised that it was so easy for her, and we will be doing this more often now.

I bought a CD player and found a belt with a CD pocket. We are using an old set of sony headphones that basically complies with the requirements of headphones for the listening therapy. So, we can proceed. We missed an evening and morning playing -- not that bad at all. Julia no longer resists playing her music, and actually asked about her music the evening that we did not have the equipment.

I put together a binder of printouts of alphabet sheets, direction sheets, and connect the dot sheets. Hopefully, we will be able to take time during our vacation and do some of the work. And it will be fun. I hope.

Looking for a reading program

I am posting this on a few yahoo groups looking for advice for our summer. If anyone who visits has any ideas, please let me know.

I am looking for a program or plan – computer or not – to move my 7 year old closer to reading this summer. Julia is finishing Kindergarten with an IEP in place for next year. She was adopted from China 18 months ago so we have some language issues and she was found to be on the autistic spectrum at the beginning of this year. Her motivation for learning in general is not great, but she has been willing to do some “family work” every night since January. We have been working on recognizing and writing letters for the last few months. She is also beginning to associate sound with the written letters. Julia is a pretty intense visual learner, and we have been supplementing visual with kinestetic exercises (writing in sand or clay). I would be be grateful for any advice about methods, books, or programs.

Birth of an American Consumer

Happy Easter! Once again, we are pretty low-key with our celebration and it does seem to be just right for Julia. So many times I wonder whether we were the best family for Julia – would bigger or younger have been better, but when we have a day like this one when we have hit Julia's comfort level and have challenged her a little bit, I feel like we are perfect for each other.

It is Easter and last night we dyed eggs the old fashion American way. No Ukrainian eggs this year. Julia helped through the whole process. She put the eggs in water to boil and watched the water boil. She helped me make the dye and thrilled to dipping eggs in dye cups and removing jeweled toned wonders. Is there anything better than a green egg with your name written across it?

Because of our weekend sleeping routine – that is, one of us gets to sleep late and the other gets up with Julia – the Easter Bunny did not make his appearance last night. Instead, after a home made pancake breakfast, Julia and Daddy took Latkah out for a walk and the Easter Bunny did his work. As it happened, when I finished hiding eggs and filling the basket, I looked out the front door and in the snow, right in front of the door in the snow, was non-dog or cat animal prints. They might have been squirrel prints but I am pretty sure they belonged to a rabbit.

Julia came back from her walk and very happily looked for the hidden plastic eggs and then found her basket in the front hallway. She opened some of her eggs and found chocolate eggs and pink peeps – the peeps are her favs – and tore at the small gifts in her basket. There was a mini-kite that we won't be flying for another month (who knew?), bubbles for practicing blowing hard and gently, a chck in a show globe, and her favorite – a littlest pet shop kittie and fish. The “pets” came with a booklet of pet merchandise and Julia uttered the magic words, “I want this stuff!” And with that she became a complete American consumer.

She was enthralled with all the pictures of big headed tiny bodied cats, dogs, fish, turtles, and birds with all sorts of rediculous little houses, little playthings, and little junk! I hate the stuff – plastic trash that there is no way of keeping a hold on. It all gets lost and there is no convenient way to keep it together. But when my little consumer said she wanted stuff, I figured we had a way into the stickers for good behavior and rewards world. So tonight we set up a calendar. Julia can get one sticker for having a good day (defined as no hitting, no time outs, and generally being nice), a sticker for anything special that she has done during the day (like when I asked her to speak quietly at the movies and she did), and/or a sticker from having a good day at school. When she gets 10 stickers, she can get a new pet. I figure that she has the possibility of getting a new toy every 4 days. The pets are pretty cheap, and I am sure what she will want is the house and shop stuff eventually that is bigger and more expensive. That's when the sticker number will go up.

We tried using stickers to promote good behavior when Julia first came home and it was way too far beyond her. No way to make her understand what we were doing and what she was supposed to do. I hope we can use it now. It would be helpful to enforce good behavior and to change some of the ucky stuff.

Yesterday, Julia and I went to the clay store and Julia painted the star she made a few weeks ago. Her clay teacher, that nice high school senior guy, told us that he could fire the turtle and house that we made this week at home. Julia made a hanging vase and we turned in two projects that we did at home. She is still constrained by the rules of clay making. She does not yet understand the process of using the wet clay, drying it, firing it, painting it, and firing it once again. It will be awhile yet before she is free to create creatures and scenes like she does with the Fimo that she uses for fun, but I believe that she will get to that point.

We saw Horton Hears a Who at the movies this afternoon. It is a great movie for little kids and Julia loved it. She is still having a bit of trouble with the big sounds at movies, but after the previews the sound went down some (David asked the PTB to turn down the sound. Either they did it, or the movie was just quieter.) and she could take her fingers out of her ears. Big noise still hangs around as too stimulating for Julia. We are thinking of bringing some ear muffs or head phones to dull sound a bit. The movie is gentler than any other Dr. Suess media experiment. Even with Jim Carey doing one of the voices, there is restraint.

Julia was drawing on Friday when she called me to her white board and announced that she had drawn a Y and Y was for yo-yo. She then drew a yo-yo and a Julia playing with it. Then yesterday in the car, she was looking at the Ice Age DVD box. When we stopped, she wanted me to read words that she pointed to. I believe that after months of memorizing her little books with single words or single sentences, she is going to start reading soon. I bet by the end of summer, she is recognizing words!

This afternoon after the movie, I was on the couch at my computer and Julia was playing with her clay. She had asked me to make a kangaroo and then totally remade what I made for her, so much better than mine! She came over to me and looked in my eyes for a really long time. And then she said, “Mommy, I love you.” She laughed at me, watched my eyes to see herself in them and hugged me. Julia is growing deeper and deeper in love with us, and we more than return the favor.

Julia's doings

We have a teacher's conference followed by a "team" conference during which we will talk with the principal, ESL teacher, school psychologist, and teacher about planning for Julia's next semester. I trust these people so much because I see what they have been willing to do for Julia this semester. We will talk about whether to set up special ed testing for her. I think they are worried that Julia will not qualify for special ed services because of her language -- not speaking English is not a special need. Oh, I've written this before. Sorry.

Anyway, I am looking forward to the meeting.

Julia continues to amaze us. I am not writing often enough (and chide myself for that) to tell stories, so I'll do it bullet style.

*Julia is bringing home papers from school. Just like other kids!! The papers are not perfectly completed, but she is attempting (I am sure with help) to do what the other kids are doing. She signs her first name at the top of many of the pages and has followed some directions. Last weekend, I decided to hang some of her art-y pictures on the kitchen wall. Julia has finally begun to notice and appreciate some of our other pictures on the walls. She was so proud that I hung hers and showed them to David when he came home.

* Julia is a drawing machine! She uses markers to draw on the big white board that I have set up in the kitchen. She draws while I cook dinner. She even followed my direction yesterday to stop playing with clay in the living room and to come into the kitchen to draw.

Julia fills the white board more drawing – some of it recognizable. She doesn't just draw, she tells stories and her drawn people have adventures, feeling, and mishaps. The board gets very messy and very full as she draws over and over the people and things she draws. This is not the way that I've seen most kids draw but as Julia has discovered drawing so late, she is finding her own way. I know we are just beginning this phase. I can't wait to see how it evolves in the next few months.

*Julia continues to relax more. Hard to know when this will be finished because each time she does it, I think she looks so much better than she has before. Last week, we were at the tiny bathroom sink in our tiny bathroom, Julia on her stool and I next to her, both of us brushing our teeth. She threw one arm over my neck and we stood bent over and brushing. It was such a small, casual gesture, one that might have passed by unnoticed if it wasn't Julia's.

*Recently, I've been feeling like our bedroom has become a bears' den. Up until last week, the three of us slept in our bed bed with three different covers. Some nights I thought of it as the family yurt. Here, we have moved from our NYC days with 450 sq ft with 2-year-old Cheshire, to a nice sized house that has rooms we never enter! First Avenue would be fine with this Julia. I was putting away clothes the other day in Julia's real room and realized that besides darting in and out for clothes, we were spending no time at all in there. I don't want to force Julia to move back into her room. She is very happy right now and I think she is moving along pretty quickly these days. I hate to change that. BUT she also has a really nice room. I will figure something out and maybe we will play in there every day.

Julia loves the bed time ritual and sometimes announces that it is time for bed. We go up, change into pjs, brush and floss and rinse with Listerine (Julia does it because I do it. No matter the taste.), and then to bed to read. David and I take turns each night but I think she would prefer the Daddy do it every night.

We have both been working with Julia on her little books, some that she brings from school, others that I have taken from the library. We started by pointing to the single words in these book. When the books have a line or so on each page, I pointed to each word as Julia said it after me. Now, Julia is learning the books pretty quickly and yesterday for the first time she started point to the words by herself. To clarify, she is not reading or eve npointing to the right word, but it is making an impression.

In the morning, Julia wakes up in a good mood most of the time. This is pretty much pleasure for me. Sometimes when we wake up while David is showering, Julia plays with my hair. Making believe that she has a bottle of shampoo and scrubbing my head. Then she squeezes our some pretend "lotion" to make my hair beautiful. She love scrubbing and messing up my hair and also loves laughing and laughing at the results.

That's all for now. I have to get some pictures up next time.