Spicy Dragons & Dinosaurs

Is there anything as mind numbing as talking to a lawyer about real estate contract and filling our long boring forms?


Julia is outside walking with Amanda shieking with delight, and I thought I was going to get soooo much done today. Fun stuff, like cleaning my clothes closet and digging a few weeds, but nooooooo. Instead, I have my nose to the necessary grindstone of paper work.


Whew, nothing like a good whine to clear the air.

Julia completed her first full week of intensive therapy. At present, her line therapists, and there are four of them, are at the house for blocks of 2-4 hours each. Usually two a day. One day a week, we see three. Using visual schedule squares, Julia picks two activities from a big list of things to do. It is all playing right now, and so every choice is fun. The two choice cards are put on a Now & Then schedule and Julia and the therapist start playing with the Now choice. The therapist also sets a timer. Timer goes off, Now choice is put away, and Then choice is started.

The therapists are totally engaged with Julia. They play hard with her -- matching her stories, responding to her, asking questions, putting in their own ideas. If Julia has trouble with a therapist having too many ideas and she balks or whines, the therapist will back off a little bit, not completely. Julia is slowly started to accept more and more of the therapists' ideas and the play becomes slightly more cooperative.

I see from this method that the objectives are very clear and ever present. (I can't help but reflect that we were not as clear during our playgroup and so this is great learning for me as well.) The objectives of working on choices, follow through, transitions are renewed throughout the time together.

Julia can get out of sorts at times with the amount of regiment to this plan. She will ask to play longer with some toy. She will whine a bit in the beginning of a session that she doesn't want to chose anything, she just wants to play. The therapists insist on their process -- albeit, gently but they get their way.

On every nice day we can, we are spending free time at the pool. Julia runs and splashes. She wants me to sit on the side and watch her, and she does make sure I am watching her! During shorter breaks we have meals or snacks. I've taken to giving her a cocoa bottle during shorter breaks as well. I try to spend most of her free time actively with her.

I see some bending on her part to this schedule. And this is one week. I hope that two months of this will make school easier for her and her teachers.

I have not done our homework with her this week. I feel like it would have been too much for her this week. I also cancelled a swimming lesson i had scheduled for her today. I am hoping to get back to both.

At the pool during lunch breaks or at the end of a day, Julia looks for the few kids she has connected with. When she sees them, she yells out their names and makes her way to them. Most of the time, there are brief greetings and then Julia bounces and dives under the water. These are not intense play/communication times, but I am very happy to see Julia calling out, another kid responding, and some joy at finding one another.