Tigger

It has been challenging to find consequences my daughter takes seriously.   With my son, losing screen time is about the worst thing that can happen to him and just the threat is enough to get his attention when we have a behavioral issue to address.

Until recently, my daughter had very little that would truly give her pause and cause her to think about her actions and words.   Of late, she's been very interested, no obsessed, with audiobooks.  Losing the ability to listen during her free time to the latest (or any) audiobook has been enough of a punishment that she is willing to make a change for the positive.

Today, I had to come up with something else.   She's starting to move into formalized piano lessons.  This is problematic (to her) because her teacher has been her music therapist for four years.   Music therapy is more a therapy session than a music class and while they do a lot of music, including writing songs and playing the piano, the sessions were largely directed by her.

Therapy needs to focus on what the child is feeling and while her teacher/therapist is providing guidance in the session, if my daughter needs to get out some anger through loud, crashing, stomping music, that's the best thing for her at that time.  She has been playing the piano and learning music theory and the basics of the piano organically,

The trick with teaching a blind child piano in a meaningful way beyond theory, is you need to be able to teach braille music.   Braille music uses the same six dot system that regular braille does, but the dots mean entirely different things.  Chelsea, our music therapist, and I have invested in an introduction to braille music course.   If you haven't been introduced to braille music, this is no simple task for the teachers—and Chelsea and I have zero experience.   Chelsea has been heads down in the print versions of the books, learning braille music so she can teach my daughter.

Chelsea is impressive, picking up braille music very quickly, even though she doesn't read braille.   She and I have been doing a tag-team approach having her keep the print booklets while I have the braille printed versions here at the house.   We get on Zoom calls with my daughter and she introduces the concepts to my daughter.

This would have gone well if my daughter had been both interested and open-minded about learning braille music.   She was and is not.   Music therapy, which was fun for her because she got to do what she wanted and Chelsea helped her work through emotional and mental strain through the sessions, is now actual lessons.   My daughter rejected braille music outright the first time because she was unwilling to let go of her understanding of the dot combinations as letters and contractions and see them as having a second meaning.

Chelsea has taken the braille music course we purchased, which is not specific for piano and is also not directed at young children, and created special lessons just for my daughter.   She even wrote up some sheets of songs my daughter has been singing and wanted to learn on the piano.   It didn't matter though, my daughter still rejected it almost completely.   Chelsea is making progress, but the format change from therapy session to lesson format with concepts my daughter is not wanting to contemplate has made things slow going.

Today, my daughter was outright insulting Chelsa and me, saying we were stupid (which is definitely not allowed,) was throwing papers all around, banging on the keyboard, and even kicking it.   She threw a pillow at one point which closed the laptop and ended the Zoom call.   I pulled her into the next room and had a rough conversation with her.

During our talk, my daughter told me she didn't care about the keyboard (which I've had since the 1990s) telling me, "it not an heirloom."   She was furious, resentful, and absolutely, positively not going to do get back on the call.   I suddenly realized I had a leverage point.   I told her I was taking Tigger until further notice.

Tigger is her favorite stuffed animal and sleeps with her every night.   She was in near hysterics.   She cried out, "you'll tear Tigger's head off!"  I said I had no intention of hurting Tigger, but if something happened it wouldn't matter to me because "I don't care about Tigger.  He's not an heirloom."   I had her, and she knew it.   I reiterated I wasn't going to hurt Tigger, but she wasn't getting him back for now and I expected her to go back into the room, get on the call, be respectful to Chelsea and at least try the music.   She only had to do so for a few minutes and then Chelsea had something fun planned.

It worked.   I'd found my leverage.   She had a relatively nice remainder of the lesson and even tried to match the braille music characters to the tune of the Moana song.  Chelsea and I texted for a long while after the call about our strategy going forward.   Mostly, it's going to be slow, until my daughter gets it.   At that point, we both predict we won't be able to get her music fast enough.

The Big Boy Update:  My son is interested in LEGOs again.  He has taken over our dining room table and is currently trying to put together every LEGO model we have instructions for.   We have a lot of instructions.   The table is packed with completed models.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  After giving in for the music lesson today, my daughter said, "I don't want anyone to look at me.  I just want a mask."  I told her I'd go get her a mask and she could wear it for as long as she liked.   She picked the dinosaur mask from the three I offered and then happily sat at the keyboard, eating a Sourpatch Kids gummy every so often when I thought she'd paid attention and listened.   It was bribery at its finest.