It’s been a hectic couple of weeks in my house and I want to apologize for not updating as frequently as I was. I found out a couple of days ago that I have pneumonia. I haven’t felt well for a while now, and it’s nice to finally be on some meds and feeling a bit better. As you can imagine, being that sick and having to take care of three young kids has a way of draining what energy you do have left, right out of you.
Anyway, a few days ago, Bella did something that I’ve been waiting for, for a very long time. She said “I love you”. The overwhelming joy that I felt was amazing and I’m pretty sure I walked around with misty eyes for hours. It was a great step. While I wish that I could focus on that for… well, longer than I have, I also have to focus on the disappointing mid-year review I received.
I wrote before how we sat down with her teachers to discuss what we wanted to happen this year. While this, of course, was just a “hope list”, I was still a little disappointed that she hadn’t met any of her goals. While she is vocalizing more, they still can’t count anything she says as “words in context”. We wanted her to learn twenty, at this point in time, she has about three. I consider three to be a great improvement since she was at zero.
Unfortunately, with every improvement she makes, she also seems to take a step back in another area. While her meltdowns don’t last as long as they used to, she’s begun pinching herself and pulling her own hair. She’s not causing any serious issues yet, but we’re told this behavior can escalate when she gets older and cause severe injury.
While she’s improved with her irritation to clothing, she’s begun avoiding foods. Unless the food is pureed to the consistency of baby food, she’ll refuse to eat or she’ll take it and then throw it on the floor. A very frustrating issue for us and our carpet.
Perhaps one of the biggest new issues we’ve been facing is her affinity for running. We noticed it last summer, but she wasn’t as nimble on her feet as she is now. When we’d go for our walks in the afternoon, we noticed that she would run ahead of us. We didn’t have an issue with that since we were in the fields and woods, and she never ventured off the paths. One day, she did. We were letting her run on the sidewalk, back and forth between the two of us and in the blink of an eye, she turned and ran right into the road. She doesn’t comprehend danger so the cars that whizzed by just moments earlier wasn’t enough to scare her into not going in the road. A heartstopping lesson that I felt awful for. I was just thankful that there were no cars coming at that moment. We tried to keep her in a stroller, but she fought hard to get out. Once she learned how to unbuckle herself, that was the end of that. We tired walking while holding her hand, but when we wouldn’t let her run free, she’s “protest”. You know, that thing that kids do when they literally become dead weight hanging off your hand? We decided that it was mean to force her into a stroller. She just wanted to explore her surroundings and in a stroller she could barely see around her. It came down to the choice to buy a harness for her. We were used to the snickers and underhanded comments we got from strangers, so we expected to get more now that we were putting our daughter on a “leash”. We used it for the first time when we went to the zoo. We got the looks and the comments, but Bella was happy. She got to see around her and was able to walk free, but she was also safe. Our daughters safety was more important than the opinions of strangers. We use the harness when we go for our family walks and it works out fine, but we make sure to still give her time to run. The simple joy she finds in running as fast as she can isn’t something we want to take away from her. We just want to keep her safe when she does it. This was the main reason the teachers at school suggested looking into a service dog. With so many kids to keep an eye on, Bella’s running was becoming a little bit of an issue. A service dog, for autism, is trained to keep a child from running and if by chance the child does take off, the dog is trained to actually go after them (since they can run faster than most people), stop the child and actually bring them back to you. We’re still working on the service dog, but in the mean time, at least at home, the harness is working just fine.
On the brighter side of it all, she is improving. She’s counting more and she’s made it up to 10. The words are getting clearer and easier to understand. She’s also sorting things into groups by color which is another great step. Unfortunately, she’s only doing these things at home. Her teachers have yet to see or hear her to these things. At school, she’s doing great with sounds. When her teacher holds up a picture of an animal, she can tell her what sound the animal makes. It’s quite fascinating that the way her mind works tells her that what she learns in school is only for school and what she learns at home is only for home. She doesn’t make those animal sounds when she’s here with us.
Although there was a little disappointment with the review, I try to focus more on the positives and all in all, Bella is doing great. She’s actually come quite far in the short time she’s been in speech and with me working with her a few hours a day, she’s improving at home too.
She’s doing the best she can and that’s all anyone can really ask of her. She’s not giving up, so neither am I.
