Julia and I have been together for more than a week now, broken only by therapists. We have taken a dinosaur almost each day and read about it and drawn it. She remembers a few facts about each one. I am charting the facts I want to work with. We will have a lot of sorting, ven work, time line, etc. work that we can do with about a dozen species. Julia tries the best that she is able to turn turn the facts into a story of mommies and eggs and families and babies. Kidnapping usually comes into play, and sometimes the eating of eggs or babies. Most of her stories, no matter how gruesome end well. Amazing how an eaten baby can be reunited with her family!
I have been reading a math book that the specialist at Randall loaned to me -- one of three. If I get through this first one, I will consider the loan well made. Called Early Numeracy, by Wright, Martland, and Stafford, it does start at the beginning. It talks about rote and rational knowledge and how to get and develop both. I am learning.
I tried this exercise with Julia. It is supposed to be done with little flash cards with dots but with Julia the learning of this sort goes so much better on the couch with a blanket over both of us and my fingers. I had her count the fingers of my one hand forwards and backwards. Backwards is still hard. There is no rote knowledge of this that has stuck (this is after three years in school during which I have seen them count together in all sorts of ways and seen Julia work one-on-one counting). Then, we play the game of naming how many fingers without counting. I use zero (a fist), one and two. We do this until she is getting is pretty quickly. I add three and we practice. We worked for about 5-8 minutes and I've held her attention the entire time. It will be interesting to see if any of it is retained today.
Julia is still very close to the edge of guarding her well of tears -- yes, a little dramatic, but I feel her almost falling off at times. She is still Julia Dinosaur (and signing all of her art with that name), but during her alone play, I hear her saying that one or the other dinosaur grows up. Something that she insists that she will never do. It is creeping in as okay. She is still talking about not wanting to be pregnant. I wish I knew what was behind these words. I feel like our time with Marilyn was a long time ago and can't wait to get back to her tomorrow. We will miss next week because of our first wedding travel. I hate to miss considering the work that we've started.
Julia is more clingy and huggy these days. She is still asking me/us to look at her, just to stare into her eyes. Her behavior some mornings seems very autistic-like -- a lot of movement of arms and her head without reason. I don't know whether her meds stop this movement or whether it is just her waking up and taking possession of the morning.
Last night, we played UNO. We have been playing often with open hands of four cards. I added #5s and also the wild cards last night. Julia had a very hard time. It was as if she was coming to us, playing with us from a very busy train station. It was incredibly hard for her to play, for her to concentrate, for her to do the next action she needed it. But the most incredible was that she did not fight, she did not refuse to play because it was hard (and it was hard, very hard), she did not even get close to a melt down or fighting. Julia struggled through the layers, the noise, the whatever stands between her desire to do what we want her to do and us. She struggled and she played. Watching her struggle and reach for what we want her to do fills my own resolve to do what I must to help her learn. Julia is growing and changing, she is adapting her goals to mine, I must do everything in my power to keep that going.
I am still waiting to hear from the LEND people. I do not expect to hear for another month or so, but I am still inpatient.
No comments:
Post a Comment