I was invited to sit in on my daughter’s play therapy session yesterday. It was interesting to observe and I was only able to do so because, well, she’s blind and didn’t know I was there. Her therapist sent me a text about ten minutes in saying I should try to sneak into her office. This would have been an easy feat if her office door opened silently. I opened the door quietly and slowly but there was the inevitable ‘click’ and my daughter immediately said, “who opened the door?”
I stood outside the cracked door and her therapist and I decided to shut the door with some hand gestures and she would try again in a minute. I waited and this time she opened the door to her small office. I walked in slowly and quietly and sat down behind her on her sofa. I was able to watch the entire session without my daughter knowing I was there, even as they got up twice and went to get water for painting and then left again a second time at the end to wash up.
The session in and of itself was interesting, especially watching my daughter make a big mess of things with the paint while her therapist seemed not to mind at all that her office walls might get splattered. What I thought was interesting was some of the phrasing she used.
Instead of saying, “here, you need a paper towel to wipe your hands”, she would wait until my daughter was clearly frustrated with the paint on her fingers. She would ask her what she needed. My daughter would make a squeaking noise. She would say, “is that your frustrated sound? You look like you’re frustrated; is there something I can help you with? Is that your frustrated sound?” When my daughter would ask for a paper towel, she immediately got one. We see this behavior at home sometimes.
My daughter was interested in mixing colors and I watched as Dhruti gave her paint and let her pour them into the containers and then mix the containers. My daughter then wanted to stir the two colors together to see what the new color would be. She began stirring quite quickly the paint in the small cup. I think I would have said something like, “you need to be careful, you’re going to spill the paint.” Instead, Dhruti said, “if you stir fast, you’ll get paint on the floor; if you stir slowly, the paint will stay in the cup.” This phrasing appealed to my daughter’s personal desire to have the paint where she could paint with it so she slowed down her stirring. She reminded her several more times and my daughter began to slow more slowly without being reminded by the end.
Then at one point my daughter was about to spill one of the containers because she was being a little reckless at the time. Instead of telling her to be careful, she took the paint and said very matter-of-factly, “I had to take that so it didn’t spill.” No emotion, no judgement, just an adult doing what adults do to manage a situation with a child. My daughter wasn’t bothered at all by any of what she said.
The Big Boy Update: My son’s teachers had a meeting with us and said many good things. They also said he’s struggling some with forming his letters and needs some practice formally with a therapist (short term) to give him some extra time to catch up. My son has a lot of manual dexterity, he’s just never been very interested in drawing so this makes a lot of sense. They don’t think there is anything developmentally or physically wrong, he just needs a little more focus on writing and some extra help would help. She said he’s very proud of his writing journals. I bet he’ll be even more proud when he can write words.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: “Who drew this picture?” This is a question I ask my daughter a lot. She brings home drawings frequently from school. The thing is, many times they’re not her drawings. The other children like to make pictures for each other. Generally it wouldn’t matter but when we see some good visualization of forms, we want to know if she’s seeing better and able to draw more accurately as a result.
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