Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Signing


Katie has learned a few signs.  It has been a long road since her motor skills are not the best, and she has her own variations of what works for her.  She just learned "food" the other day and has been using it quite a bit.  It took about a month for her to learn "me" (about 6 months ago) and she picked up "food (or eat)" in a day!  Priorities, you know...

signing

Wednesday, July 3, 2013

Odd things

Here I am at Starbucks.  I don't even like Starbucks that much but I found a gift card.  I'd rather have a coffee from Circle K but they probably don't have wifi and seating.  Katie is right now in her summer program (Conductive Education) most likely walking down a long hallway between obstacles, up and down stairs, picking up rings off the floor, kicking balls - I am sure she is having a blast. I'm lucky that she thinks therapy is more fun than Disneyland.

So, thought this was a good time to take a few minutes and write. I have however, forgotten my reading glasses - so if you find mispellllinz, that is why.  :)

Katie has proprioception issues which is, "the ability to sense the position and location and orientation and movement of the body and it's parts."  This is not news to me, but some odd things about her that I think could be related to this are:

 1)  When her hair gets in her face she never brushes it away.  And my husband wonders why I don't grow out her bangs!  She will be sporting bangs for a while, hubby. Or this one:

2) If she happens to sit on a toy she doesn't seem to feel discomfort.

3)  Not once has she tried to scratch an itch, ever. She feels pain and tickling, but when it comes to these other things - nothing.  How can you not have an itch?

Recently (before it was 119 degrees) we were in our backyard and Katie was playing with the small rocks in our planter.  I looked away for not more than 5 seconds and when I looked back she had ants all over her hand. She was fine until I started yelling and slapping them off of her. They left little welts that hurt me more than her.

On the other hand, no pun intended, she is so empathetic when others get hurt.  About two months ago I sliced my fingertip off with a new slicer I bought - damn slicer - I should have read the directions. Katie cried for an hour even though I was containing my freaked-outness pretty well.  I kept reassuring her I was fine as I tried to control the bleeding. Man, fingers really bleed!

It's good to have an empathetic child but if there is someone crying or hurt on TV or in a book, or if you say "ouch!" she gets all teary-eyed.  What a nice kid I have!  Too bad she can't feel her own itch or brush her hair out of her eyes.  For now we just make sure we have a lot of rubber bands in the house.