My husband and I met with our children’s play therapist today to talk about how things have been going. When we first came in both she and we had an initial short topic to discuss it turns out—my son is doing just fine and doesn’t need to be seen by her anymore. We’ve noticed a big change in his behavior and mental state at home and she’s seen the same thing. She said when he’s eight or nine we might see a big change as he enters third grade, but for now, he’s doing very well.
Then we spent the rest of the time talking about my daughter. She told us some things she’d been noticing. She said that cognitive-wise she’s a step behind because of the vision loss, but that her brain is five steps ahead in compensating and it’s showing in recent behavior changes. What’s happening is she’s realizing more that the rest of us can do something she can’t (see) and she has a newfound mistrust of people as a result.
This is manifesting itself as defiance and lying. She wants control. She doesn’t like what’s happening to her and she’s trying to gain control by paying careful attention to what’s going on around her. And she’s sharp because she hears everything and uses her other senses as well to figure out things. You can’t get away with things you used to be able to. For instance if she says to close your eyes while she does something she doesn’t necessarily trust us anymore to do so. She’ll ask the person to turn around and then she even might feel to make sure she can touch your back to know you have actually turned around.
The pushing of boundaries, being defiant and even lying is to try and assert control and to show she is capable and wants to show she can do things. The advice we got was to continue to be consistent with her. Don’t argue with her about lying. Just lay down a consequence—but give her three chances. And if she cries (unless she’s hurt) ignore it or say, “I know, it’s sad. Let me know when you’re done” because she’s using that as a tool too. Dhruti said at about seven-years-old she’ll realize it’s embarrassing and stop on her own.
And then she gave us an interesting suggestion. She told us we could bribe her. But she said it had to be handled carefully. My daughter is feisty in temperament and you can change a behavior with feisty children with an incentive (bribe) because they get something they want as a result. My son however is of fearful temperament. A fearful child will see that they did something and for instance, got a sticker as a reward, because that made the adult happy—not because the child did something good. So it’s tricky, but we came up with some strategies we think will work well for each of our children.
For now we’re going to keep sending my daughter to the play therapist until she’s finished processing what she’s dealing with. For my son, he’s graduated again. I’m not sure he’s going to be happy about that because he loves seeing Dhruti.
The Big Boy Update: My son asked me the other day, “how do ceilings in mines stay up?” I explained about struts and supports and the general sturdiness of rock and then he told me, “well, that’s not how it works in Minecraft”. I should have known that’s what he was talking about.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: Yesterday’s procedure went very well for my daughter aside from one thing that happened when she woke up. When she comes out of anesthesia she’s usually upset, doesn’t want to be touched and screams a lot. It takes a bit for her to calm down. But this time she was upset over something else—she thought she couldn’t see. The nurse told her there was ointment in her eyes and she was fine and her vision was okay. By the time she was lucid again she’d blinked away the ointment, but it was a scary time for her for a bit. Fortunately I think she doesn’t ever remember the post-anesthesia time so I’m hoping she won’t have any anxiety about it for next time.
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