November 9

One of our volunteers, N., has felt like Sarah is clearer each week in her communication, both in terms of pronunciation and also in terms of her thoughts. Awesome!

There are some words where Sarah loses her clarity because she gets so excited. I often request that she slow down a tiny bit so we can understand her better and she almost always can do this. Her willingness to practice language has always been and continues to be amazing. G. figured out that she maintained more clarity with words similar to bicycle rather than bicycle itself, since that is her favorite word of late. They did lots of practicing with motorcycle, unicycle, and tricycle. 

Last weekend Sarah was sitting on Carl's lap and they were watching a video of a light show set to music. As is customary, Sarah's jaw and hands were moving excitedly and there was rigidity in her whole body. Carl started counting out a beat and moving her arms to it. After about 10 minutes, she was much more relaxed through her whole body and he was able to stop the movements and she stayed relaxed. She was still watching but somehow she was able to process the information more easily. 

One of Sarah's current favorite books is a Dora book. One page has the numbers 1-7 written and the idea is to count in Spanish. One evening, totally independently and with no prompting, Sarah counted 1-7 in Spanish, correctly, while pointing at the numbers. Holy moly! We never thought to focus on more than English for Sarah, since getting one language seemed miraculous enough. Now she is easily incorporating parts of a second language without us even trying! 

Mom-Mom and Pop-Pop are visiting and Sarah is loving pretending to be a crying baby who receives comfort from her grandparents, especially Pop-Pop. For all of the most recent grandparent visits, Sarah has wanted to pretend to cry while snuggling into her grandfathers, all 3 of them plus her great-grandfather. During this visit, when she is done in  the SR room or sleeping, as she comes downstairs she says, "Pop-Pop, Pop-Pop, Pop-Pop."

My headaches seem to be gone (shhh. knock on wood. yay). This is probably a combination of timing, medication, and figuring out that for whatever reason I should not sleep on my right side during cluster headache season. 

When Sarah is focused she can do many things correctly and seemingly easily. When she is not focused then she struggles to do the very same things correctly and if you didn't know she could do whatever skill then you would think she couldn't do it. For example, we have a game called Quack Quack. There are 8 little flat wooden animals, each made up of a unique combination of 3 colors. There are 3 dice and when you roll you look for the animal that matches the color combination of the dice. Sarah and I play a little less competitively than the rules dictate so we just take turns rolling and finding animals. The last time we played she found her first 3 animals quickly and correctly on her first pick. For her last turn she was in theory focused on the game with her body and head orientation but her focus was not actually there anymore and she couldn't get the last animal at all. She kept picking animals that weren't right. If she hadn't done her first three turns so cleanly then I would just think the game was too challenging. Maybe she used up her focusing oomph or maybe she just lost interest. I'm not sure. She has skills, it is just a matter of harnessing the right moment and environment for her abilities to shine. 

Whenever people ask me how home schooling is going I pause and say that I think it is going ok. Inwardly I think, "Ack, I'm still not sure! we don't do lots of academics." But I also think, I've been rocking this whole home schooling thing for 3 years in the form of Sarah-Rise. Am I getting in tons of academics? No. Am I addressing Sarah's special needs and trying to help her strengthen the clarity of her language, her social connection, her attention span, her ability to focus, her ability to digest her food well and process it daily, and a little reading, writing, and math? Absolutely. I feel like a split pie where half is uncertain and panicky and hoping for approval from the societal powers-that-be. The other half is capable, confident, and perhaps a bit mama-bear defensive wanting to roar out our accomplishments and knowing that Carl and I are the powers-that-be that should have the ultimate say in what helps our daughter the most. So, homeschooling from the viewpoint of adding new components to our SR program, is going sort of stiltingly and slowly. Homeschooling from the viewpoint that that is what we have been doing already just not in name until now, is going beautifully and we have an amazing team to do it.

I have also been feeling like a split pie in terms of how to take care of myself. Half of the time I want to (but rarely do) hide in a room by myself and not be with my kids. The other half of the time I think the answer is to be in the SR room. I guess either one eliminates the daily grind of whining, yelling kids who don't listen to what I say. In the SR room I am able to roll with Sarah not wanting to do what I suggest. That is the framework and I can easily let go and creatively try in new ways. Outside the room I have more distractions and things I "should" do so I don't roll with resistance very easily, to put it mildly. I haven't been in the SR room a ton lately, but when I am in there I often have a meta awareness that I am really really good at it. Maybe I just want to feel good about what I do and like I know what I'm doing. In the SR room or on my own or at my office giving massages, I can feel more in charge of my life and more confident in my abilities. In the rest of parenting life I do not have that ease and confidence as often as I would like. I think it is time to do more outsourcing when possible, letting Carl and Sonia handle the areas where I feel like giving up or yelling. It is at least time to take more breaks and get more sleep. I seem to learn this lesson over and over again. Maybe it is like Sarah with the Quack Quack game. Sometimes I totally rock it and clearly navigate to the right answer and other times I lose my oomph and my focus and can't move forward clearly for the life of me. I have skills, it is just a matter of harnessing the right moment and environment for my abilities to shine. Well, like daughter like mother.