Saturday morning report

Ach! This is what happens when I don't write for a few days. I feel too far behind to know where to begin. I am also behind in other work – my notes to Paul about the last QEC meeting are late, I need to read 2 books by Monday for the social skills group, and the house once again is out of control.

I am writing during swimming. A father just picked up a little girl (probably 8) who didn't want to go into the pool and threw her in. Her fear, her stiff body, her cry telegraphed outward. She is being taught by the same guy that Julia had last year and he now has her in his arms telling her not to worry. That he is there to catch her. That he will not let her go. What her father did was clearly wrong.

Julia is noticing people in a different way. Amy gave her a chap stick which is a bit pink. Julia loves it. She told Amy that I don't wear lip stick and that I don't dress nicely because I have to work in the house. Ummmm. So she has noticed the same jeans and comfortable but ratty sweat shirt that I wear day to day. That same day, I picked Julia up right from an interview – so I was dressed in “nice” clothes. Julia looked me up and down and told me that I was beautiful. I was grateful for her comment, her thought, and her observation, but was she hoping that I would do it more often? Before we went into the pool, Julia told me that Linda was very pretty.

We are doing cuddling every day and our eye-to-eye contact a few times each day. And we stopped listening therapy to see what the Attachment therapy does. Julia is more fidgety at home and in school. Kimberly, our speech therapist noticed it too – Still, in speech therapy, Julia did very well with the sequencing cards and the cards in which something is wrong (bird flying upside down or ladder with the middle missing). She also asked Kimberly to color part of a drawing that she was making. Carol, Julia old speech therapist, worked hard on these activities and it did not often show. I think of this as taking a long time to sink in; I don't know if this is what is called a processing disorder. Kimberly and Annie are consulting about Julia – this is a great part of the clinic experience and in a perfect world there would be money and time for all of a child's caregivers and teachers to get together to consult on every child. Anyway, Kimberly does not yet understand Julia – of course, no one else does either. She used terms like non-linear thinker.

Being in class yesterday with Julia and watching where the other kids are are where Julia is can be disheartening. Christy was presenting a short lesson on reading numbers using manipulative's. Julia can just about count to 20 and then all in single blocks. She is no where ready for rows of 10's and blocks of 100's. Another disheartening thing this week, Christy asked me for a list of the sight words that we have been working on at home. Our list has 32 words and at home, Julia knows about 28 of those cold with the other needing some prompting. She could not recognize any when Christy tested her in the classroom, and in the library (significantly quieter), Julia recognized 6. Sometimes when we work at home, I put the words in a very short story or have her write the sight words as I dictate them. We have to do more of that to move her from specific knowledge to something more generalized.

In the water, Julia is listening better that during some weeks and she is calmer about doing what is asked of her, but she is still far from proficient at what she is being taught. It drives me crazy that it takes so long for her to learn anything, but then I see her floating on her back and kicking in approximately the correct way and my heart swells.

In other “news”, my butt is getting better. Still in pain, but not as debilitating. I can bend down to pick something up without seeing the white light.

Julia is trying the back stroke and actually getting her arms out of the water.

A beautiful young woman with red hair in a very cool short spiky cut sits next to me. She has a 3 year old girl on her lap. They are obviously waiting for an older sib during the swimming lesson. The mom is explaining to the little one that they are going to drive to Massachusetts, That it will take 10 hours, that it will take a whole day. From the questions the little on is asking, she understand more of what was said that Julia usually does. And she is definitely a linear thinker.

This afternoon -- Chinese New Year party!