My husband and daughter are at my best friend’s house tonight with their Y Guides tribe. This is a father/daughter group that starts when your child is six-years-old and goes on for several years. My husband and daughter joined a tribe run by my best friend’s husband, who with four girls, this is his third iteration with his youngest child, is likely an expert.
They had an initial meeting that involved ice cream at Ben & Jerry’s. My son and I inadvertently crashed the party, deciding we wanted ice cream after his tumbling class, only to find out the tribe was still there getting to know each other. We got our ice cream and headed off quickly to Target to get some new shoes for my son.
There was a second meeting but it was brief to pick up their vests—or rather cut pieces of leather, string and a needle, along with some instructions on how the vests should be laced together to make the vests. My husband worked for a good while last night on creating his and my daughter’s vests with surgical precision. The final product looked good, I had to admit.
Tonight the tribe is meeting to find out the tribe name, based on most popular vote by either the fathers, the daughters or possibly both (I wasn’t involved). They will also find out what each member’s tribe name will be.
My daughter picked out her and her father’s name early on, with her being Jumping Duek and him being Soaring Duck. Or is that backwards? I think I have it right. They have a leather name lanyard that will be decorated tonight with drawings, sequins, brads, jewels and other items.
My daughter has been excited about Y Guides since she heard she and her father would be a member of Gigi and Matt’s tribe. There is another name for Y Guides you might be more familiar with: Indian Princesses. Things became politically incorrect some time back and both the Boy Scouts and Indian Princesses had their names “sanitized”. But the comradely and fun is still there.
The Big Boy Update: My son got angry at another neighbor boy today and hit him in the face. We didn’t see any damage, but it wasn’t okay to do. My son is rarely violent. My husband had a talk with him explaining even if someone else was being unjust to another friend, it is not okay to punch them in order to protect that friend.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My husband sent an email to the other fathers in the Y Guides tribe explaining a bit about my daughter. I didn’t want him to do it at first until he told me what he was going to say. He told them that if their children wanted to come up to my daughter and talk to her, they could say, “hi, it’s Brynner” so my daughter would know who she was talking to. I think it’s going to take a bit for her to settle into playing with the other girls. Children move so fast and my daughter can’t move around safely in an environment she doesn’t know. But she doesn’t give up easily and likes making new friends.
Wednesday, October 3, 2018
Tuesday, October 2, 2018
The Things I Can’t Watch
The title of this blog is true in a lot of things in my life. I’m necessarily wise, but I do have perspective on things. We gain perspective with experience and time. I can remember my children when they first started walking with some level of proficiency. They would do the little walk/run thing where they were cantered forward as they moved, the only thing keeping them upright was the next foot falling forward and catching them from tumbling over.
My children had no idea what could happen if they fell. They had no idea that falling on their face on the macadam surface of the street would result in scraped limbs or face. They didn’t care, they were walking—and walking was fun. New freedoms, new experiences.
As a parent or an adult even, I could see the potential for disaster. I could imaging the pain. I could envision the days of healing dermis. And all that made me wary, cautious and worried for my children as I saw them do this new thing called walking.
Sometimes I’d even get a jolt of adrenaline I could palpably feel when I saw a child fall or get injured in any way. I had to learn to work through it, because while it is my place to keep my children safe, it’s not my place to keep them from experiencing the world.
But there are things I can’t watch. I have spine issues, predominantly in my neck, but not exclusively. I’ve had two spinal fusions and a host of other things done to try and alleviate the myalgia, neuralgia and pain I have. I’ve had good years and bad years. There are good days and bad days and sometimes there are even good hours and bad hours. We don’t know when the injury happened to my neck but it appears it was broken at some point when I was a child and then healed wrong.
My parents would have never let me go untreated if we had known—but none of us knew. I remember as an early teen, sometime after stopping competitive gymnastics, starting to crack my neck a lot. When. I was in college it was worse and then when I was a co-op at IBM my manager sent me to a chiropractor who did an x-ray and told me my neck was straight, not curved like it should be. Since that time I’ve been working to try and alleviate or mitigate what I can with my spine.
What happened to cause it? I don’t know, we’ve speculate on many things but I have the highest suspicion it was close to the end of my gymnastics years when I did a roundoff back handspring tuck and for some reason pulled it at the last second. I fell on the right side of my face and I saw my feet over my left shoulder. But who knows at this point. It’s only recollection and supposition.
There are a few things I can’t watch though—my son doing roundoff back tucks is one of them. We were at tumbling on Sunday and I realized Zak was going to have my son practice his back tucks on 12” foam mats. But I couldn’t watch. I grabbed my laptop, told my husband I couldn’t do it and went to the car for the rest of the hour.
Could my son break his neck? Yes. But he’s trained with his instructor and hasn’t been asked to do it until he knew what he was doing. Chances are very low. I couldn’t put my fears onto my son. It wasn’t fair. He has to live his life and shouldn’t be hampered by what shaped my life.
After the lesson, Zak sent me a video of my son doing his roundoff back tuck. I must have watched it ten times; I was so proud. I wasn’t scared because I knew he was successful in the video. He’s pretty good for a seven-year-old.
The Big Boy Update: I had a brief conversation with my son’s integrative therapist (her name is Liz) with my husband on the phone today. We’re going to talk more. Figuring out what motivation to do (or not do) things with my son has been a trick. We may have to have him skip after school activities and playing with friends if he’s not able to complete work at school. I’m hoping just the thought of working after he gets home on more school work will help him work while he’s at school. And don’t get me wrong, this isn’t additional work. It’s him taking three hours at school to get something done that should have taken him twenty minutes—and distracting the other students while he isn’t working. Hopefully we’ll figure out a good plan that works for him. Once he gets some confidence back I hope his anxiety will subside.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter has had one of her front top teeth loose for some time. It did that thing my son’s front teeth did as it became more loose: it pushed over on top of the other front tooth, looking odd. My daughter wanted the tooth out, badly. She worked on it for almost an hour this morning until it fell out. She wanted to put the tooth in a bag, saying the only person she wanted to touch the tooth was the tooth fairy.
My children had no idea what could happen if they fell. They had no idea that falling on their face on the macadam surface of the street would result in scraped limbs or face. They didn’t care, they were walking—and walking was fun. New freedoms, new experiences.
As a parent or an adult even, I could see the potential for disaster. I could imaging the pain. I could envision the days of healing dermis. And all that made me wary, cautious and worried for my children as I saw them do this new thing called walking.
Sometimes I’d even get a jolt of adrenaline I could palpably feel when I saw a child fall or get injured in any way. I had to learn to work through it, because while it is my place to keep my children safe, it’s not my place to keep them from experiencing the world.
But there are things I can’t watch. I have spine issues, predominantly in my neck, but not exclusively. I’ve had two spinal fusions and a host of other things done to try and alleviate the myalgia, neuralgia and pain I have. I’ve had good years and bad years. There are good days and bad days and sometimes there are even good hours and bad hours. We don’t know when the injury happened to my neck but it appears it was broken at some point when I was a child and then healed wrong.
My parents would have never let me go untreated if we had known—but none of us knew. I remember as an early teen, sometime after stopping competitive gymnastics, starting to crack my neck a lot. When. I was in college it was worse and then when I was a co-op at IBM my manager sent me to a chiropractor who did an x-ray and told me my neck was straight, not curved like it should be. Since that time I’ve been working to try and alleviate or mitigate what I can with my spine.
What happened to cause it? I don’t know, we’ve speculate on many things but I have the highest suspicion it was close to the end of my gymnastics years when I did a roundoff back handspring tuck and for some reason pulled it at the last second. I fell on the right side of my face and I saw my feet over my left shoulder. But who knows at this point. It’s only recollection and supposition.
There are a few things I can’t watch though—my son doing roundoff back tucks is one of them. We were at tumbling on Sunday and I realized Zak was going to have my son practice his back tucks on 12” foam mats. But I couldn’t watch. I grabbed my laptop, told my husband I couldn’t do it and went to the car for the rest of the hour.
Could my son break his neck? Yes. But he’s trained with his instructor and hasn’t been asked to do it until he knew what he was doing. Chances are very low. I couldn’t put my fears onto my son. It wasn’t fair. He has to live his life and shouldn’t be hampered by what shaped my life.
After the lesson, Zak sent me a video of my son doing his roundoff back tuck. I must have watched it ten times; I was so proud. I wasn’t scared because I knew he was successful in the video. He’s pretty good for a seven-year-old.
The Big Boy Update: I had a brief conversation with my son’s integrative therapist (her name is Liz) with my husband on the phone today. We’re going to talk more. Figuring out what motivation to do (or not do) things with my son has been a trick. We may have to have him skip after school activities and playing with friends if he’s not able to complete work at school. I’m hoping just the thought of working after he gets home on more school work will help him work while he’s at school. And don’t get me wrong, this isn’t additional work. It’s him taking three hours at school to get something done that should have taken him twenty minutes—and distracting the other students while he isn’t working. Hopefully we’ll figure out a good plan that works for him. Once he gets some confidence back I hope his anxiety will subside.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter has had one of her front top teeth loose for some time. It did that thing my son’s front teeth did as it became more loose: it pushed over on top of the other front tooth, looking odd. My daughter wanted the tooth out, badly. She worked on it for almost an hour this morning until it fell out. She wanted to put the tooth in a bag, saying the only person she wanted to touch the tooth was the tooth fairy.
Monday, October 1, 2018
L-MAIL
I got a text from Aunt A about a week ago saying something was coming in the mail for my daughter and to keep an eye out for it. She didn’t say what it was, but I was on the lookout for anything addressed to my daughter. Things come for her from time to time, mostly they’re from one of the organizations for the blind or something I’ve ordered for her from one of the companies that provide products and materials for visually impaired people.
Sometimes we get letters, sometimes in braille. I remember having my daughter’s braillest translate one of the things that came in the mail three years ago because I had no idea if it was important or not. She returned it about a week later and I found out it wasn’t anything important. I felt badly at the time because I had envisioned her taking an hour to translate the single sheet and I’d wasted her time.
Now, after learning braille to the extent I have, I realize it wouldn’t have taken her that long to interline the sheet with printed words, but at the time it was a mass of run together dots to me.
Something did come in the mail to my daughter from something called L-MAIL. It was blank on the front page aside from some little text at the top and bottom with an address, reference number and a statement that the letter was brought to us by L-MAIL. But overlaying that, the entire front of the page was filled with braille. What in the world did it say?
You see where I’m going with this, right? It was the thing Aunt A had sent to my daughter, only I didn’t know it yet because there was nothing in print of the letter content itself. But not to worry, I can read braille and I’d just transcribe it.
There are challenges though that I hadn’t encountered before. First off, the braille was single spaced. Remember in school when we wrote our papers for the longest time as double spaced documents? My daughter’s at that level and will likely be for a while. As someone transcribing the braille into test, that extra space above the lines is helpful because that’s where I write in the print version.
There was another challenge though—there was braille on the front and the back of the page. It’s fairly easy to see the raised dots in any reasonable light as they cast a shadow, even as small as they are. But when you have both raised and lowered dots on the page you need bright light at a nice angle.
I spent awhile on the front of the first page, only to find all that braille was just the text that was tiny and took up about ten percent of the page when printed. There were some contractions I didn’t know, but I have some excellent reference sheets and I was able to find them quickly (and getting practice at the same time).
I turned the page over and the first line was Aunt A’s name, and then her address, followed by my daughter’s name and address. It was laid out in braille just like we would write a letter in print. Following the addresses was the date and then the first line of the letter proper, “Hi Reese,”.
I wasn’t sure what my daughter’s attention span would be when I gave her the letter, so I started her at the top of the page so she’d know who had sent her a letter and then jumped her down to the salutation and letter body.
She flew through the words she knew, but got stuck when it was contractions in words she didn’t know. I pretended like I had “found out” what the letter said because as you may well remember, she doesn’t like it when I know more braille than she does.
Aunt A used words my daughter could both read and pronounce in the letter. Many of those words, such as ‘good’, ‘your' and ‘letter’ have braille contractions my daughter already knows. She pronounced out words like, ‘halloween’ and got some help from her father and me.
My daughter hasn’t had an opportunity to read double-sided braille pages before. She was confused by the inset dots and before we explained said, “they did a lot of erasing!” My daughter does a lot of erasing. You erase by pressing the incorrect dots back into the page. Done carefully, it’s hard to tell the dots were ever there. My daughter isn’t the most careful because she’s typically in a hurry. Which is probably why the inset dots from the other side seemed like erasures to her.
I had transcribed the letter in advance and had gotten stuck a few times, but the one that tricked me the most was right at the end. It was an all caps word that involved the letter ‘X’ more than once. X is a contraction for ‘it’. There were also letter ‘O’s. What in the world? Then it hit me, it was a line of XOXOXO. My daughter figured it out much easier than I did.
Thanks for the fun surprise in the mail, Aunt A.
The Big Boy Update: My son had a challenging day at school again today. We don’t understand it. He’s either able to work or he can’t get much done at all. We’re going to have a conference with the teacher to discuss what she’s seeing. We’ll discuss with Liz, his integrative therapist tomorrow too.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter and I made bath bombs today. I didn’t realize they were so easy to make. Baking soda, citric acid, witch hazel, a bit of color and some essential oils. Press them into a mould and three minutes later they come out as a bath bomb just like you find at the store. As I write this my daughter is in the bath with one of the bombs. Tonight she selected a lemon one. Tomorrow she wants to do the wild orange one.
Sometimes we get letters, sometimes in braille. I remember having my daughter’s braillest translate one of the things that came in the mail three years ago because I had no idea if it was important or not. She returned it about a week later and I found out it wasn’t anything important. I felt badly at the time because I had envisioned her taking an hour to translate the single sheet and I’d wasted her time.
Now, after learning braille to the extent I have, I realize it wouldn’t have taken her that long to interline the sheet with printed words, but at the time it was a mass of run together dots to me.
Something did come in the mail to my daughter from something called L-MAIL. It was blank on the front page aside from some little text at the top and bottom with an address, reference number and a statement that the letter was brought to us by L-MAIL. But overlaying that, the entire front of the page was filled with braille. What in the world did it say?
You see where I’m going with this, right? It was the thing Aunt A had sent to my daughter, only I didn’t know it yet because there was nothing in print of the letter content itself. But not to worry, I can read braille and I’d just transcribe it.
There are challenges though that I hadn’t encountered before. First off, the braille was single spaced. Remember in school when we wrote our papers for the longest time as double spaced documents? My daughter’s at that level and will likely be for a while. As someone transcribing the braille into test, that extra space above the lines is helpful because that’s where I write in the print version.
There was another challenge though—there was braille on the front and the back of the page. It’s fairly easy to see the raised dots in any reasonable light as they cast a shadow, even as small as they are. But when you have both raised and lowered dots on the page you need bright light at a nice angle.
I spent awhile on the front of the first page, only to find all that braille was just the text that was tiny and took up about ten percent of the page when printed. There were some contractions I didn’t know, but I have some excellent reference sheets and I was able to find them quickly (and getting practice at the same time).
I turned the page over and the first line was Aunt A’s name, and then her address, followed by my daughter’s name and address. It was laid out in braille just like we would write a letter in print. Following the addresses was the date and then the first line of the letter proper, “Hi Reese,”.
I wasn’t sure what my daughter’s attention span would be when I gave her the letter, so I started her at the top of the page so she’d know who had sent her a letter and then jumped her down to the salutation and letter body.
She flew through the words she knew, but got stuck when it was contractions in words she didn’t know. I pretended like I had “found out” what the letter said because as you may well remember, she doesn’t like it when I know more braille than she does.
Aunt A used words my daughter could both read and pronounce in the letter. Many of those words, such as ‘good’, ‘your' and ‘letter’ have braille contractions my daughter already knows. She pronounced out words like, ‘halloween’ and got some help from her father and me.
My daughter hasn’t had an opportunity to read double-sided braille pages before. She was confused by the inset dots and before we explained said, “they did a lot of erasing!” My daughter does a lot of erasing. You erase by pressing the incorrect dots back into the page. Done carefully, it’s hard to tell the dots were ever there. My daughter isn’t the most careful because she’s typically in a hurry. Which is probably why the inset dots from the other side seemed like erasures to her.
I had transcribed the letter in advance and had gotten stuck a few times, but the one that tricked me the most was right at the end. It was an all caps word that involved the letter ‘X’ more than once. X is a contraction for ‘it’. There were also letter ‘O’s. What in the world? Then it hit me, it was a line of XOXOXO. My daughter figured it out much easier than I did.
Thanks for the fun surprise in the mail, Aunt A.
The Big Boy Update: My son had a challenging day at school again today. We don’t understand it. He’s either able to work or he can’t get much done at all. We’re going to have a conference with the teacher to discuss what she’s seeing. We’ll discuss with Liz, his integrative therapist tomorrow too.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter and I made bath bombs today. I didn’t realize they were so easy to make. Baking soda, citric acid, witch hazel, a bit of color and some essential oils. Press them into a mould and three minutes later they come out as a bath bomb just like you find at the store. As I write this my daughter is in the bath with one of the bombs. Tonight she selected a lemon one. Tomorrow she wants to do the wild orange one.
Sunday, September 30, 2018
Help!
Today something happened that made me very proud of my daughter. My husband, daughter, son and I had just returned from tumbling to find our neighbors outside with their bounce house inflated. I went inside to put things away while my son and husband stayed outside, my husband saying he was heading over to talk to our neighbor about something.
My daughter was somewhere in the house when I went to the closet and got up on the bench in front of the mirror to get something. The bench is narrow and I suppose I’m clumsy and I faltered and ended up falling backwards into the bathroom and onto the tile floor. I had grabbed at the side of the shelving to stop myself and had gotten a friction cut on my thumb. I was okay, but at the time it frightened me so I called out, “help! Can someone come help?”
My daughter came running into the bathroom. I told her to call dad on Alexa. I was assessing the damage while she tried not once, but three times to call her father. Alexa tends to be picky about “cell” number versus “mobile” number versus ‘iPhone” number and neither she nor I could remember which category dad’s phone number had been listed under.
She got through to him and said, “dad, you need to come, mom’s hurt.” I heard my husband say, “I’ve got to go” to the neighbor and the next thing I knew, he was in the house. My daughter wanted to know if I needed and ice pack and my son came in to give me a hug.
Both my husband and I told my daughter how proud we were that she had rushed to the rescue. She said, “well, I only know how to call with Alexa.” We told her that was the only thing that counted.
The Big Boy Update: My son is doing very well with all things tumbling. Today he did a roundoff backflip flawlessly. Typically you do a roundoff back handspring and then a back tuck, but he didn’t need the extra momentum from the backhand spring so his instructor said to go straight ahead with the tuck. He sent a slow motion video of it to me after class. It looks pretty cool.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: We were talking about our favorite places to eat the other day. My daughter thought about it and said, “my favorite place to eat is the fair.” She’s in good timing as the state fair arrives in two weeks. Our whole family loves the fair.
My daughter was somewhere in the house when I went to the closet and got up on the bench in front of the mirror to get something. The bench is narrow and I suppose I’m clumsy and I faltered and ended up falling backwards into the bathroom and onto the tile floor. I had grabbed at the side of the shelving to stop myself and had gotten a friction cut on my thumb. I was okay, but at the time it frightened me so I called out, “help! Can someone come help?”
My daughter came running into the bathroom. I told her to call dad on Alexa. I was assessing the damage while she tried not once, but three times to call her father. Alexa tends to be picky about “cell” number versus “mobile” number versus ‘iPhone” number and neither she nor I could remember which category dad’s phone number had been listed under.
She got through to him and said, “dad, you need to come, mom’s hurt.” I heard my husband say, “I’ve got to go” to the neighbor and the next thing I knew, he was in the house. My daughter wanted to know if I needed and ice pack and my son came in to give me a hug.
Both my husband and I told my daughter how proud we were that she had rushed to the rescue. She said, “well, I only know how to call with Alexa.” We told her that was the only thing that counted.
The Big Boy Update: My son is doing very well with all things tumbling. Today he did a roundoff backflip flawlessly. Typically you do a roundoff back handspring and then a back tuck, but he didn’t need the extra momentum from the backhand spring so his instructor said to go straight ahead with the tuck. He sent a slow motion video of it to me after class. It looks pretty cool.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: We were talking about our favorite places to eat the other day. My daughter thought about it and said, “my favorite place to eat is the fair.” She’s in good timing as the state fair arrives in two weeks. Our whole family loves the fair.
Saturday, September 29, 2018
Pumpkins and Prizes
I was away most of the day at a board retreat. We didn’t really retreat anywhere, we just went to the multipurpose room at my son’s school for an overly long meeting. We talked about lots of things, including strategic directions of the school for the coming years as well as the diversity initiatives for the school. Exciting stuff—if you find that knd of thing exciting. It’s a nice group of people on the board and I enjoy working with them. Some of the day was serious but we managed to laugh a good bit as we did some of the role playing exercises with the consultants brought in to address diversity.
After the retreat we had planned to attend an annual event for visually impaired children and their families called, “Pumpkins and Prizes”. My daughter likes this event because she sees people she knows there and all the activities are designed with low vision children in mind. Couple that with the location being at a local gymnastics gym and it was hard to go wrong.
My son came with us and was one of a few sighted children in attendance. I had to remind him several times that he was moving very quickly through the space and that he needed to be extra aware of the other children because most of them wouldn’t be able to see him. He took what I told him seriously and was careful. albeit energetic the rest of the time. The gym was set up with some obstacle courses, a trampoline, a foam pit with a climbing rope and other physical activities which my son was over-qualified and over-skilled to do. He was told backflips weren’t okay on the trampoline and since they didn’t know his background or training, that made sense. But he wasn’t bored; he enjoyed all the activities and spent some time playing catch with another low vision child using a rubbery pumpkin.
My daughter saw her VI teacher from last year, who had to leave in the middle of the school year due to health reasons. We didn’t know what had happened to her and so we were all happy to see her and find out she was doing well. My daughter was particularly happy to catch up with her, telling her about what she was doing in school now.
It was a bit of a challenge getting the children out of the foam pit when it was time to go. As a child I loved the foam pit and I can remember the magic it held for me. As an adult, it’s an entirely different story—it’s hard to move around in and get out of. Maybe it’s easier to float on top as a child, I don’t know, but I’m glad to stand on the side and watch them have all the fun.
The Big Boy Update: My son pronounces the word ‘mine’ as ‘my-ng’ with a hard ‘g’. We’ve told him many times the correct pronunciation, not telling him he has to pronounce it correctly, more letting him know he’s not pronouncing it how it’s spelled. He informed me the other day that he knew exactly how it was pronounced, but he didn’t like that way and he was going to keep using his version because he liked it better.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: We were sitting down to our dinner tonight when I overheard my daughter say to her father, “back in the old days, a long time ago, when I was three…"
After the retreat we had planned to attend an annual event for visually impaired children and their families called, “Pumpkins and Prizes”. My daughter likes this event because she sees people she knows there and all the activities are designed with low vision children in mind. Couple that with the location being at a local gymnastics gym and it was hard to go wrong.
My son came with us and was one of a few sighted children in attendance. I had to remind him several times that he was moving very quickly through the space and that he needed to be extra aware of the other children because most of them wouldn’t be able to see him. He took what I told him seriously and was careful. albeit energetic the rest of the time. The gym was set up with some obstacle courses, a trampoline, a foam pit with a climbing rope and other physical activities which my son was over-qualified and over-skilled to do. He was told backflips weren’t okay on the trampoline and since they didn’t know his background or training, that made sense. But he wasn’t bored; he enjoyed all the activities and spent some time playing catch with another low vision child using a rubbery pumpkin.
My daughter saw her VI teacher from last year, who had to leave in the middle of the school year due to health reasons. We didn’t know what had happened to her and so we were all happy to see her and find out she was doing well. My daughter was particularly happy to catch up with her, telling her about what she was doing in school now.
It was a bit of a challenge getting the children out of the foam pit when it was time to go. As a child I loved the foam pit and I can remember the magic it held for me. As an adult, it’s an entirely different story—it’s hard to move around in and get out of. Maybe it’s easier to float on top as a child, I don’t know, but I’m glad to stand on the side and watch them have all the fun.
The Big Boy Update: My son pronounces the word ‘mine’ as ‘my-ng’ with a hard ‘g’. We’ve told him many times the correct pronunciation, not telling him he has to pronounce it correctly, more letting him know he’s not pronouncing it how it’s spelled. He informed me the other day that he knew exactly how it was pronounced, but he didn’t like that way and he was going to keep using his version because he liked it better.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: We were sitting down to our dinner tonight when I overheard my daughter say to her father, “back in the old days, a long time ago, when I was three…"
Friday, September 28, 2018
Brain Sickness
My son has had his ups and downs over the past three years in school. If he grew up when I did, he would be called, “hyperactive”. That’s what I was called. I see in him a lot of the behaviors I had when I was young. He never runs out of energy and has a hard time settling down to get work done. He’s also disgraced mentally, which makes getting started on work an added challenge. Then, to add to the pile of challenges he has, he has anxiety about doing the work.
We had him tested over the summer. When I was a child I was tested too. The results came back and I was performing above grade, had the capacity and intelligence to learn and in fact I was learning, only I was a challenge to deal with in the classroom. Or at least that’s how I remember it. My parents would know more. My memory is only from a child’s perspective. Apparently I knew everything that was going on, it just looked like I wasn’t paying attention.
But as far as starting and completing work, I don’t remember having any problems in that area. When we say down with the child psychiatrist to review the results, she said, “he’s a very bright little guy.” And while Intelligence Quotient numbers aren’t solidified until a child is older, my son ranked in the very superior range overall. All the testing areas were quite high with one exception—processing speed.
This factors into the anxiety component. My son doesn’t want to get things wrong, have corrections, make mistakes. This can cause him to have trouble even starting to get work done and focus. His mind feels like it’s being attacked by warriors, soldiers, bad guys if you will. When that happens, he’s lost, he told me.
He’s been working on it though. He figured out how to put up a wall to battle the attackers and then was able to put a figurative “roof” up as well to keep the anxiety from winning. But it doesn’t always work.
He was doing well at the beginning of the school year, glad to be a second year in his class and an upperclassman to the first years. And then something happened, but we don’t know what it was. It was a big change. My son was barely able to get work done at all. One day this week he spent a half-hour drawing on his eraser. And he was complaining about feeling nauseated.
His stomach hurt when it was time to go to school, when we talked about school, when he was in school during work cycle, but not during playground time. We all agreed it was anxiety. I picked up my son on Tuesday to go to his integrative therapist and he told me how he was sick and I’d better stay away from him so I didn’t catch it.
I told him I didn’t think he was contagious because I thought what was making him feel sick was in his brain, not his body. He thought about it and said that yes, what he had was, “brain sickness”. When we got to Liz’s office we told her about his “brain sickness” and how it was making him feel so badly.
Liz had me stay in session with him and I we talked through what was happening. He said (and showed on his body) how the sickness was in his brain, it came around to his mouth (but didn’t get stuck there) and then went into his stomach, where it was causing him to feel sick.
Through the hour I watched Liz talk him through what was happening and help him come up with a plan, that we turned into a contract, that would help him. This combined two things: a means to get him to want to work at school, despite being afraid of not getting things right, and a reward system to get “freedoms” he wanted such as screen time, a second dessert, allowance and one on one time with a parent.
We called the contract, “Freedom with Responsibility” after a Montessori tenant. If my son met a certain number of the items on the list, he would get to select a freedom. But he had to be responsible first. Some of the items are easy, and some are more challenging. Working at school was one he is required to do each day if he wanted to gain a freedom.
So far, so good. He’s been able to get back to work at school and has been proud of what he’s doing. I also told my son we could give him a Tums before school—that dad takes them too—and they help with acid in your stomach, which is what gets produced in excess when you’re under stress or having anxiety.
My son has been happy about things every since Tuesday. He’s earned screen time, although he hasn’t used it like I thought he would have. He’s been more interested in playing outside with his friends after school, which is definitely preferable.
The Big Boy Tiny Girl Six Pack Discussion: At dinner tonight we were talking about moving a heavy desk out of a room that has a door that’s too small to fit the desk through without lifting and rotating it. My son said he could help because he was strong and he had a six pack. My daughter piped up, saying, “no you don’t, you have a four-and-a-half pack.” Then she asked, “Dad, how much of a pack do you have?” My husband explained that currently he only had a one pack. My son said, “well, Papa has a zero pack because he likes to eat everything."
We had him tested over the summer. When I was a child I was tested too. The results came back and I was performing above grade, had the capacity and intelligence to learn and in fact I was learning, only I was a challenge to deal with in the classroom. Or at least that’s how I remember it. My parents would know more. My memory is only from a child’s perspective. Apparently I knew everything that was going on, it just looked like I wasn’t paying attention.
But as far as starting and completing work, I don’t remember having any problems in that area. When we say down with the child psychiatrist to review the results, she said, “he’s a very bright little guy.” And while Intelligence Quotient numbers aren’t solidified until a child is older, my son ranked in the very superior range overall. All the testing areas were quite high with one exception—processing speed.
This factors into the anxiety component. My son doesn’t want to get things wrong, have corrections, make mistakes. This can cause him to have trouble even starting to get work done and focus. His mind feels like it’s being attacked by warriors, soldiers, bad guys if you will. When that happens, he’s lost, he told me.
He’s been working on it though. He figured out how to put up a wall to battle the attackers and then was able to put a figurative “roof” up as well to keep the anxiety from winning. But it doesn’t always work.
He was doing well at the beginning of the school year, glad to be a second year in his class and an upperclassman to the first years. And then something happened, but we don’t know what it was. It was a big change. My son was barely able to get work done at all. One day this week he spent a half-hour drawing on his eraser. And he was complaining about feeling nauseated.
His stomach hurt when it was time to go to school, when we talked about school, when he was in school during work cycle, but not during playground time. We all agreed it was anxiety. I picked up my son on Tuesday to go to his integrative therapist and he told me how he was sick and I’d better stay away from him so I didn’t catch it.
I told him I didn’t think he was contagious because I thought what was making him feel sick was in his brain, not his body. He thought about it and said that yes, what he had was, “brain sickness”. When we got to Liz’s office we told her about his “brain sickness” and how it was making him feel so badly.
Liz had me stay in session with him and I we talked through what was happening. He said (and showed on his body) how the sickness was in his brain, it came around to his mouth (but didn’t get stuck there) and then went into his stomach, where it was causing him to feel sick.
Through the hour I watched Liz talk him through what was happening and help him come up with a plan, that we turned into a contract, that would help him. This combined two things: a means to get him to want to work at school, despite being afraid of not getting things right, and a reward system to get “freedoms” he wanted such as screen time, a second dessert, allowance and one on one time with a parent.
We called the contract, “Freedom with Responsibility” after a Montessori tenant. If my son met a certain number of the items on the list, he would get to select a freedom. But he had to be responsible first. Some of the items are easy, and some are more challenging. Working at school was one he is required to do each day if he wanted to gain a freedom.
So far, so good. He’s been able to get back to work at school and has been proud of what he’s doing. I also told my son we could give him a Tums before school—that dad takes them too—and they help with acid in your stomach, which is what gets produced in excess when you’re under stress or having anxiety.
My son has been happy about things every since Tuesday. He’s earned screen time, although he hasn’t used it like I thought he would have. He’s been more interested in playing outside with his friends after school, which is definitely preferable.
The Big Boy Tiny Girl Six Pack Discussion: At dinner tonight we were talking about moving a heavy desk out of a room that has a door that’s too small to fit the desk through without lifting and rotating it. My son said he could help because he was strong and he had a six pack. My daughter piped up, saying, “no you don’t, you have a four-and-a-half pack.” Then she asked, “Dad, how much of a pack do you have?” My husband explained that currently he only had a one pack. My son said, “well, Papa has a zero pack because he likes to eat everything."
Thursday, September 27, 2018
Unsleepy Drawings
My son used to hate drawing, he didn’t want to color with crayons—ever—and he didn’t like to write, at all. For the first time though, I think he’s starting to like drawing and coming up with things to draw.
My son couldn’t sleep last night. My husband took him into the bonus room where for forty-five minutes, my son drew things. And they were pretty good things, considering he didn’t like drawing at all just a short time ago.
The first picture is of sports my son is interested in. See if you can guess them all:
This second photo is my children in the back seat of the Tesla Model S (note my daughter who is wearing glasses) with dad driving them to McDonalds. The lower half os of my son on the electric scooter my daughter got for raising the most money (#1).
The Big Boy Update: I got my son a weighted blanket. It’s five pounds with small glass beads in a matrix inside. Some children like the feel of weight on them and when my son is upset, he likes to hide. So I thought I’d give it a try. He was very interested in it when it came in the mail today. Tonight he’s underneath it, probably sweating. Maybe I should go check on him after I finish this post…
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My husband put my son back to bed the other night after he did the drawing above. As he was walking out the door my daughter suddenly jumped up out of bet and said, “wait for me”. Then she must have woken up more because she said, “daddy, why are you here?"
My son couldn’t sleep last night. My husband took him into the bonus room where for forty-five minutes, my son drew things. And they were pretty good things, considering he didn’t like drawing at all just a short time ago.
The first picture is of sports my son is interested in. See if you can guess them all:
This second photo is my children in the back seat of the Tesla Model S (note my daughter who is wearing glasses) with dad driving them to McDonalds. The lower half os of my son on the electric scooter my daughter got for raising the most money (#1).
The Big Boy Update: I got my son a weighted blanket. It’s five pounds with small glass beads in a matrix inside. Some children like the feel of weight on them and when my son is upset, he likes to hide. So I thought I’d give it a try. He was very interested in it when it came in the mail today. Tonight he’s underneath it, probably sweating. Maybe I should go check on him after I finish this post…
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My husband put my son back to bed the other night after he did the drawing above. As he was walking out the door my daughter suddenly jumped up out of bet and said, “wait for me”. Then she must have woken up more because she said, “daddy, why are you here?"
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