We saw my daughter’s teacher today. We had scheduled a conference at the first part of the school year, but due to schedules couldn’t meet until today. My daughter was having a hard time at the beginning of the school year. She was basically shutting down, collapsing into a ball and not engaging at all in the classroom or during her time in the VI room where she learns specific skills based on her lack of vision.
Today the story was totally different though; it was basically a conversation about how well my daughter was doing—excelling even—in school. She has a voracious appetite for learning new things, asking for additional work when she gets the current assignment done ahead of the other students.
She is a very fast braillist as well. This is something we suspected, watching how quickly she types on her braille writer at home, but was interesting to hear first hand from her teacher. In the thirteen years she’s been teaching in classrooms with up to four visually impaired students at a time, my daughter has a grasp on braille she hasn’t seen before. As a parent, that’s pretty exciting.
My daughter loves, loves, loves her time in the VI room now. She was upset her Orientation and Mobility time caused her to miss VI on Tuesdays to the point they moved Mr. Adam’s O&M session to a different time so she could still make her regularly scheduled VI session.
She loves her class and has forged a bond with her teacher. She also is working very well with her braillest. Last year her braillest was with her every step of the way, holding her hand figuratively, to help her through things. This year, we heard today, her braillest sits off to the side and only steps in when there is a need. This is reasonable and appropriate as the other, sighted, students don’t have a personal assistant in the class. My daughter’s first grade teacher said this is something she believes strongly in—fostering independence in a child who has the capacity to be successful in life if only those around her give her the chance.
So everyone seems happy now, which is a very good thing. The only thing that’s a disappointment is there doesn’t seem to have been much vision returned from the latest edema, despite all the drops. We go to Detroit on Tuesday to see Dr. Trese for an office visit. Perhaps he’ll have more advice for us then on next steps and if there’s a path to return any of her vision. And if there isn’t a path, the message today from my daughter’s teacher was that my daughter was always happy and eager to learn and that’s a good thing. A very good thing.
The Big Boy Update: My son is good at math, only he’s not got the basic easy problems down so well. He gets the concepts of more complicated math like subtracting a three digit number from a four digit number, but adding two single digit numbers can trip him up. So we got two apps. They’re fun and he can earn screen time to do things he wants: one minute earned for every minute he does math on the iPad apps. Today alone he’s done thirty minutes of math, including multiplication. He’s getting better quickly and he’s having fun while he’s doing it. Win.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter loves pasta. She had two bowls for breakfast by request. When I picked her up from Dhruti’s this afternoon I asked her if she wanted pasta for dinner. She said, “why not?”
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