October 18

It’s that time of year again when I start visiting schools and thinking about what will make sense for next year. Sarah’s current school situation is so dreamy and perfect but the school doesn’t go beyond kindergarten. Visiting schools means that I often see that there is a disparity in what I dream Sarah is ready for and what she may actually be ready for. I worry about all of my past choices and current choices, while simultaneously wanting to roar like a mama bear (defending myself to myself) that I have made good choices for her and she is thriving because of them and that we can trust my intuition for moving forward. Then there is deciding what is best for Amy and what makes sense as a balance for both of them. As usual, it feels a bit early to tell how Sarah will be a year from now, and yet that doesn’t stop me from trying to know the answer NOW. I like to know things yester-minute.

One possibility that I hadn’t much considered before is that we could have Sarah repeat kindergarten but in a full-day setting with a larger class. This would be a new level of challenge but hopefully with enough familiarity and comfort with the academic portion that she could thrive. Then I think that she will be 9, and then I panic that somehow it is unacceptable to have her be a 9 year old in kindergarten because then even if she proceeds one grade a year beyond that she will be 22 when she graduates high school. And yet, what does that really matter? Aren’t we just trying to look at where she is and decide the next best step to help her learn and become ever more independent? What does her age matter if when she finishes high school she is as capable and confident as an 18 year old? 

So far I think we have been successful in creating a situation in which Sarah can rock. That is my main goal going forward. I want her to continue to rock it. When settings are overwhelming or over-exciting then it is harder for her to rock it. When she is in a comfortable setting without too much that is new and over-exciting, then she can continue to surprise us daily in tiny ways. 

I do not want to homeschool next year. I just don’t. I have loved running a Sarah-Rise program and doing what bits of academics make sense as part of a school/homeschool joint effort. I do not want to fully home school. Not even a little bit. It is good to come clean about this and realize that there are many options for schooling for Sarah. They may not always be my dream situation, but if homeschooling isn’t my dream either then there are other solutions. There is certainly more information to gather, more thinking to do, more growing to do. The thing to remember is that I am safe, and I’m not trapped, and the world is packed with good people who can help in various ways.

The ways in which Sarah has rocked it during the week…

With word cards we are now doing 6 cards per pack, changing two per pack per day, and using all cards that we have used in the past. She often gets the renewed cards right away without any help, which is super exciting. When she doesn’t know a word she often makes a good guess based on at least one more more letters in the word.

Sarah is getting much more fluid with her ability to ask questions. Monday morning she picked up a bag of coffee beans and said, “Mom, Granddad, what is this?” Indeed, it  didn’t have the word “coffee” anywhere except in tiny print within other tiny print. I was most amazed at her ability to address both adults in the room and then ask a question, as if it was the most natural thing in the world to do. 

Yesterday she ran out of wipes in the bathroom and went to the closet where we keep backup supplies, got the new package and then called for help because she couldn’t open the inner seal of the wipes package. The fact that she independently tried to take care of the situation seems amazing.

Last night I told her she could get ready for bed. She went upstairs and brushed her teeth all by herself, including going to Carl for help opening the toothpaste. She also independently thought to put on the hand cream that we just started using to help her fingers.

The cream seems to be helping her fingers! I took her to a dermatologist and the doctor thought her finger blistering and rawness is eczema and given that we hadn’t tried new foods in a while, it is probably due to excess hand washing or maybe certain kinds of soaps. I kept thinking it was a dietary response instead of a skin irritation to something external. The cream isn’t medicated. It is just a really great moisturizer without any scents or unnecessary ingredients.

The results from Sarah’s latest blood test are exciting and amazing! Supposedly the test is highly sensitive and it tests for allergies regarding gluten, eggs, dairy, and some other foods. The results were beautiful! No allergies indicated. This means that once her fingers are clear then we can slowly start trying foods we haven’t tried in a very long time. We can try dairy, eggs, wheat, rye, and corn. WOW! 

Sarah still often has some disfluency when she repeats a word over and over before completing her sentence or when she repeats a sound before completing the word. Sc. asked about how to help her with this and if it would help for Sarah to watch us say the word, just as we did at the beginning of helping her with language. What an excellent idea! I have tried this a couple times and it does seem to help. 

Now to be where I am and figure out the next best step so I can rock it.