I'd like to teach the world to slooooow dowwwwwwwwn (or sing), in perfect harmony! I'd like to hold it in my arms, and keep it company...
Well, it's already the end of June, and here's what I'm seeing in the kids these days.
Both of them are bouncy and active, and also like some quiet, alone time. They're gregarious and sociable, athletically competent and participative, creative and intelligent. Highly observant and good at reading others' feelings. They seem comfortable with their individuality. Not exceedingly academic or precocious. Nobody would call them "gifted" or particularly driven toward a specific activity -- an art, sport or pursuit. And yet, they are flexible, adaptable and engaging. Fun to be with and quirky -- like little furry animals with their own thing going!
My son is starting to be much more responsible for himself. He's getting dressed in the morning, getting his own breakfast, and pulling himself together for school. He puts on his own sunblock, brushes his teeth, and packs his backpack with lunchbox. We're working on getting a more appropriately-sized water bottle/thermos! Finally we've diagnosed some of what is going on in his (growing) neurology, and are going to get him some of the help he needs while also easing up on him with respect to things he can't change. I think we're going to have a much more positive family dynamic as a result of these new diagnostic insights.
My daughter continues to be a helpful, compassionate little spark of light. She is also becoming more responsible, and can get dressed and ready with the best of them. As she gets older we see that she continues to be a very social creature and thrives on being with others in all things, especially at mealtimes. She looks up to her brother and adores him -- he can't really put a foot wrong in her eyes. Most of all, she is pretty patient and inclusive with him, especially when she can compute things more quickly than he.
We are lucky the kids' temperaments mesh so well.
On the more mundane front...
- she can buckle her own seatbelt and open her own car door
- he can make scrambled eggs and bacon
- actually, she can too
- both can make waffles and pancakes, and we're working on flipping skills
- they eat salad and vinaigrette, green beans, broccoli and bokchoy
- she eats blood oranges and artichokes too!
- he eats hamburgers, carne asada and burritos
- both of them eat some fish, as well as gyoza and soba
Now that they will eat things that aren't just pizza, pasta, hotdogs and quesadillas, we can eat in many different places at last!
This is probably the most fun we've had with the kids since they were born. They bike, they are rollerblading, they swim, they ski, they eat normal food (and every fruit known to Mother Nature) and one of the reads while the other one loves to be read to! What an amazing combination of attributes, no?
Friday, June 25, 2010
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Taking a Breather
It's been a rough year, to say the least. I'm proud to be stepping out of denial (for now) and gradually wading into acceptance and action. Hard to watch your child and see how they struggle and fall short among their peers. Even harder to realize that they can't help most of it -- their brain is not wired effectively. And hardest of all to accept that they may be able to overcome or compensate for some of the gap, but might never fully bridge it. Already completely loathing the label "special needs" since it's so often used as a PC way of saying unintelligent, lesser than, or (in a NIMBY way) someone to be kept away from typical kids because good heavens, we wouldn't want to disadvantage them by being around somebody different.
I can hear my tone and know it sounds sad and bitter -- it goes in cycles. I'm learning that there are people in the world who are really compassionate, supportive, and listen without making assumptions or jumping to conclusions. Thank god for them, and their positive beliefs. And there are those who are essentially kind and well-intended, but back away rapidly when they feel like your child isn't going to be a suitable, headed-to-an-Ivy-League-school classmate. Like any other kind of discrimination, you start to understand it best when you experience it firsthand.
Someone once told me that in the Judaic religion, they believe that certain people enter your life to teach you specific lessons -- i.e. there are no coincidences. So the sister-in-law who drives you crazy, the neighbor with whom you don't see eye-to-eye, the coworker or boss who appears to be thwarting you left and right -- they're all there for a reason. You are meant to learn by figuring out how to coexist with them in a constructive way.
I don't know if this is true, but it is certainly interesting and I find it makes these challenges easier to accept. And if so, then my son was sent to me to teach me to love, to be patient, to accept and really love people for who they are, and to look beyond the labels that I grew up believing in. Most of all, he's here to teach me to be positive while also being sincere, and to never, never, never, never give up.
I can hear my tone and know it sounds sad and bitter -- it goes in cycles. I'm learning that there are people in the world who are really compassionate, supportive, and listen without making assumptions or jumping to conclusions. Thank god for them, and their positive beliefs. And there are those who are essentially kind and well-intended, but back away rapidly when they feel like your child isn't going to be a suitable, headed-to-an-Ivy-League-school classmate. Like any other kind of discrimination, you start to understand it best when you experience it firsthand.
Someone once told me that in the Judaic religion, they believe that certain people enter your life to teach you specific lessons -- i.e. there are no coincidences. So the sister-in-law who drives you crazy, the neighbor with whom you don't see eye-to-eye, the coworker or boss who appears to be thwarting you left and right -- they're all there for a reason. You are meant to learn by figuring out how to coexist with them in a constructive way.
I don't know if this is true, but it is certainly interesting and I find it makes these challenges easier to accept. And if so, then my son was sent to me to teach me to love, to be patient, to accept and really love people for who they are, and to look beyond the labels that I grew up believing in. Most of all, he's here to teach me to be positive while also being sincere, and to never, never, never, never give up.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Having a Salisbury Moment
We're lucky to have a family friend who is an industrial designer. Very visual and creative guy, and fascinated with new technology and emerging art. When my kids were babies, he used to tell me a cautionary tale about schools and how teachers can get trapped thinking inside the box. For example, the whole thing about "coloring inside the lines" and using traditional colors for objects -- green for grass, blue for sky, yellow for sun -- like that.
He encouraged his own daughter to color, but never using coloring books with predetermined pictures and "use this color on this part" instructions. No emphasis on "staying inside the lines" but rather, busting out of them and making your own creations. He encouraged her to color, draw and make art using blank paper as a starting point. And he urged us to consider doing the same.
Well, here we are 5 years later and my daughter is a very creative artist. Gets a lot of evident pleasure from abstract paintings. She is a nontraditional thinker and clearly has her own ideas about how to create art, which we applaud and celebrate. Imagine my reaction yesterday, when she told me her classmates said her drawings "were bad, because they don't look like what we're drawing." My wonderfully artistic daughter looked hurt and discouraged, and said, "I can't draw."
I pulled myself up to full height and declared, "YOU ARE A GREAT ARTIST. The greatest artists in the world draw what THEY see and what THEY feel. They don't just draw what is in front of them. Your classmates are being silly. YOU ARE A GREAT ARTIST. We will visit the SFMOMA and I will show you what I mean."
She never ever makes art that looks like anyone else's. For example, her 'self portrait' was almost exclusively 3D with beads, buttons, yarn, feathers and other little plastic shapes on paper. Everyone else just drew a circle with eyes and nose using crayon. She painted, used glue and mixed media, in a fully non-representational color palette.
Our industrial designer friend is very proud of her, and told her to keep it up.
We'll be visiting the SFMOMA next week. She'll be able to see for herself that Paul Klee, Jackson Pollock and Pablo Picasso all missed the memo about drawing things the way they look to the masses. And thank god they did.
He encouraged his own daughter to color, but never using coloring books with predetermined pictures and "use this color on this part" instructions. No emphasis on "staying inside the lines" but rather, busting out of them and making your own creations. He encouraged her to color, draw and make art using blank paper as a starting point. And he urged us to consider doing the same.
Well, here we are 5 years later and my daughter is a very creative artist. Gets a lot of evident pleasure from abstract paintings. She is a nontraditional thinker and clearly has her own ideas about how to create art, which we applaud and celebrate. Imagine my reaction yesterday, when she told me her classmates said her drawings "were bad, because they don't look like what we're drawing." My wonderfully artistic daughter looked hurt and discouraged, and said, "I can't draw."
I pulled myself up to full height and declared, "YOU ARE A GREAT ARTIST. The greatest artists in the world draw what THEY see and what THEY feel. They don't just draw what is in front of them. Your classmates are being silly. YOU ARE A GREAT ARTIST. We will visit the SFMOMA and I will show you what I mean."
She never ever makes art that looks like anyone else's. For example, her 'self portrait' was almost exclusively 3D with beads, buttons, yarn, feathers and other little plastic shapes on paper. Everyone else just drew a circle with eyes and nose using crayon. She painted, used glue and mixed media, in a fully non-representational color palette.
Our industrial designer friend is very proud of her, and told her to keep it up.
We'll be visiting the SFMOMA next week. She'll be able to see for herself that Paul Klee, Jackson Pollock and Pablo Picasso all missed the memo about drawing things the way they look to the masses. And thank god they did.
At Last, Some Helpful Facts
Finally, some good news that's providing a measure of comfort and relief to our family.
We've been wondering if our son is dyslexic, and over the past year it's become increasingly apparent that he has some kind of learning difference. However, with a Slingerland reading tutor, his ability jumped from below-Kindergarten to 2nd-grade-level in one school year, and with Handwriting Without Tears, his penmanship is among the best of the boys in his class. (The girls' handwriting ... well, they're all WAY ahead of the boys in fine motor. No comparison at this age.) We fully credit his school for having the vision to use these methods in the classroom with all the kids since everyone benefits from them, irrespective of individual ability.
So over the last year, his symptoms and behaviors fit less and less into the dyslexic arena, but persisted and became more evident. He struggles to get words out quickly, has difficulty following multi-stage instructions (especially if they are spoken quickly), and has begun to have more noticeable challenges in his social skills and peer communication as interactions require more subtlety and accurate reading of fleeting auditory cues.
Through plain old luck and a lot of reading about language/neuropsych disorders, I started to think he has something called CAPD -- central auditory processing disorder. This is a condition where the person usually has excellent hearing acuity (possibly even hyperacuity), but their brain cannot effectively translate incoming sounds into useful meanings. Do you remember the Charlie Brown movies when the grownups talk? "Wha wha wha wha wha....." That is what conversation (or directions, or instructions, or a classroom lecture) sounds like to someone with CAPD. They do very well 1:1, but when even 2 people are talking (or giggling, or whispering, or there's background noise such as construction) their brain can't suppress the background noise AND translate the primary conversation at the same time.
Well, yesterday I took him to a pediatric audiologist who specializes in assessing (and ruling out) CAPD. She has a ton of incredibly fancy acoustic sensing equipment in her office/lab. Exhaustive medical history intake + home/school behavior descriptions. 90 solid minutes of testing my son -- he was a champ. As soon as she finished the last test, she called me into her office and said, "Well, whichever clinician sent you to me, they were spot on. Your son has CAPD and he can really benefit from speech/language therapy." I burst out laughing and told her NO DOCTOR sent him; in fact, the 40-page assessment we received from a team of neuropsychs last year was only notable for completely failing to point at CAPD as a possible diagnosis, despite the fact that they administered some of the same tests that she just did. It was all because my husband and I kept thinking, 'there's something not right here....' and seeing his behavior compared to his younger sister's highlighted specific gaps that were only growing over time.
This diagnosis doesn't rule out dyslexia, as the conditions may co-occur, but it appears less likely (symptomatically) and we finally have something concrete to go on. Now we're onto the next stage -- developing and launching a successful intervention plan. Finally, so much of my head-scratching, watching and worrying have a constructive place to go. I don't pretend to think this is the end of the sleepless nights or heartache -- I think that's part of the package of raising children and not being able to take all of the bullets for them. I do realize that I'm lucky to have taken the last 9 months off from work. The free time enabled me to observe him closely on the school playground on many many days, spend more time with him 1:1, and gave me a factual basis for research which brought us to where we are today.
Did I mention that the audiologist had a last-minute cancellation and that's how we got yesterday's appointment? I called her on Monday, we saw her on Tuesday. Her next available appointment was in August. How lucky is that? There are very few pediatric audiologists in the area who are qualified to assess for CAPD.
In the last year I've relied heavily on supportive listeners and friends. This is no road to travel on alone. Thank god for each and every one of them.
We've been wondering if our son is dyslexic, and over the past year it's become increasingly apparent that he has some kind of learning difference. However, with a Slingerland reading tutor, his ability jumped from below-Kindergarten to 2nd-grade-level in one school year, and with Handwriting Without Tears, his penmanship is among the best of the boys in his class. (The girls' handwriting ... well, they're all WAY ahead of the boys in fine motor. No comparison at this age.) We fully credit his school for having the vision to use these methods in the classroom with all the kids since everyone benefits from them, irrespective of individual ability.
So over the last year, his symptoms and behaviors fit less and less into the dyslexic arena, but persisted and became more evident. He struggles to get words out quickly, has difficulty following multi-stage instructions (especially if they are spoken quickly), and has begun to have more noticeable challenges in his social skills and peer communication as interactions require more subtlety and accurate reading of fleeting auditory cues.
Through plain old luck and a lot of reading about language/neuropsych disorders, I started to think he has something called CAPD -- central auditory processing disorder. This is a condition where the person usually has excellent hearing acuity (possibly even hyperacuity), but their brain cannot effectively translate incoming sounds into useful meanings. Do you remember the Charlie Brown movies when the grownups talk? "Wha wha wha wha wha....." That is what conversation (or directions, or instructions, or a classroom lecture) sounds like to someone with CAPD. They do very well 1:1, but when even 2 people are talking (or giggling, or whispering, or there's background noise such as construction) their brain can't suppress the background noise AND translate the primary conversation at the same time.
Well, yesterday I took him to a pediatric audiologist who specializes in assessing (and ruling out) CAPD. She has a ton of incredibly fancy acoustic sensing equipment in her office/lab. Exhaustive medical history intake + home/school behavior descriptions. 90 solid minutes of testing my son -- he was a champ. As soon as she finished the last test, she called me into her office and said, "Well, whichever clinician sent you to me, they were spot on. Your son has CAPD and he can really benefit from speech/language therapy." I burst out laughing and told her NO DOCTOR sent him; in fact, the 40-page assessment we received from a team of neuropsychs last year was only notable for completely failing to point at CAPD as a possible diagnosis, despite the fact that they administered some of the same tests that she just did. It was all because my husband and I kept thinking, 'there's something not right here....' and seeing his behavior compared to his younger sister's highlighted specific gaps that were only growing over time.
This diagnosis doesn't rule out dyslexia, as the conditions may co-occur, but it appears less likely (symptomatically) and we finally have something concrete to go on. Now we're onto the next stage -- developing and launching a successful intervention plan. Finally, so much of my head-scratching, watching and worrying have a constructive place to go. I don't pretend to think this is the end of the sleepless nights or heartache -- I think that's part of the package of raising children and not being able to take all of the bullets for them. I do realize that I'm lucky to have taken the last 9 months off from work. The free time enabled me to observe him closely on the school playground on many many days, spend more time with him 1:1, and gave me a factual basis for research which brought us to where we are today.
Did I mention that the audiologist had a last-minute cancellation and that's how we got yesterday's appointment? I called her on Monday, we saw her on Tuesday. Her next available appointment was in August. How lucky is that? There are very few pediatric audiologists in the area who are qualified to assess for CAPD.
In the last year I've relied heavily on supportive listeners and friends. This is no road to travel on alone. Thank god for each and every one of them.
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