Kid Stuff

On Daisy:

I sent this email to Daisy's speech therapist this evening:

Hi Tara - I meant to get this note to you all day, and the day just got away from me. I wanted to let you know that Daisy won't be at school tomorrow (Wednesday). The preschool class is having live animals in the class, and Daisy would never be able to deal with that. (Has any progress been made with the school psychologist, by the way?)

I wanted to tell you, too, that it already seems as though Daisy is making some progress with some of her sounds! She is able to say the F sound and the L sound when I work with her on those. When she's not conscious of it, she still defaults to her substituted sounds, but when made conscious of it, she can do it. I'm so pleased.

See you on Friday!

Lisa M.

Her response:

Lisa - Thank you for letting me know. I too see a difference right away. During speech on Friday I did initial benchmark testing with Daisy while we waited for the other students to arrive and she was able to produce the/f/ sound in all positions of a word with 85% accuracy. /L/ was the sound we targeted on Friday. At first she was struggling to find the correct place for her tongue but by the end of our session she was doing it correctly without any cues from me.

I have told the psychologist (several times) the problem is that he is only here on Tuesdays. He did get to meet her on Friday for a short few minutes during our speech session since he was here for an IEP meeting. He is planning to give you a call to get some more information, however it won't be until he is back here on Tuesday (next week).

Daisy is very smart. She takes to new strategies so easily. I am confident that this early intervention will result in great gains and she most likely won't need speech for very long. Her language (comprehension and expression) skills are very strong. There is no concern in that area.

I am glad to hear that you are seeing progress already. See you on Friday.

Tara

I really am so pleased. The note back from the speech teacher was very reassuring.

As far as the issue with the live animals . . . well, Daisy is an extremely phobic little girl. She's afraid of a lot of things - any kind of animal, insect, or creature that's not human, plus a whole host of other things. She started manifesting these fears when she was around 2 and all this time (as with her speech issues), we waited for her to outgrow them. Her phobias have gotten to the point of interfering with normal activities (for instance, walking to school to pick up Joey inevitably involves watching Daisy get hysterical because we almost always encounter somebody walking their dog; she can't attend birthday parties or playdates at someone's house if they have pets; she refuses to use the bathroom at school because she's afraid of the loud flushing the public toilets make; and the list goes on). I don't know why she's afraid of so many things. (A friend of mine actually asked me once, "Do you think Daisy is like that because you're such a clean freak?" Seriously. I'm still not over that one.) She's never been harmed in any way by any of the things she's afraid of, so it's a mystery as to where these fears come from. It's only been recently that we've realized she's not going to outgrow these issues - not without some help. It's hard to accept that as a parent, but of course we want (and are willing) to do whatever needs to be done to get her over these hurdles. So we're trying to get the school psychologist to step in and if he can't help, at least point us in the right direction. Because the truth is, she's never going to be able to go to kindergarten next year if we can't get a handle on some of this stuff.

On Kevin:

I had to explain rape to Kevin today. Why? Because he really wants to read To Kill a Mockingbird. And I want him to, and I believe he's mature enough. He's a lover of literature like his mom, and I want to nurture that love. And To Kill a Mockingbird is a classic and one of the best books ever written, and it will likely be required reading for him in a couple more years anyway.

But yeah, it was a little uncomfortable explaining that term to him. My explanation was short and sweet and I've left it up to him as to whether to go ahead with the book now, knowing that there is some adult subject matter contained in it. He still wants to read it. And you know what? I think he's really going to like it.

My boy is growing up.