Not lacking in slacking

       Let me begin this posting by asking you to please conjure up all of the apologies and excuses that may have been used by countless bloggers across the millennia to rationalize why they were remiss in keeping up with their blog entries. Go ahead, I'll wait. You could try using one of  Julius Caesar's excuses. I'm sure he had some doozies. (And I'm betting he probably had pretty spotty internet connections while out invading Britain.)

   Phew! Thanks. Now let's get down to brass tacks. Georgia finished out her middle school career on a very good note. She won awards for Most Improved in Phys Ed, and Reading. We stayed dedicated to our Stowell work to the bitter end! And then summer began. And our slothdom began. I should have seen it coming, really. But I was blinded by high hopes of getting SO MUCH accomplished over the summer. Georgia was going to be utterly transformed before the start of high school! We *have* had a pretty good summer, though. Geo did a week or so of volunteering with the multiple disability summer camp,  we drove to Boston for cousin Elliot's high school graduation, and did some fun touristy things! Saw big sister Maggie off on her 10 day whirlwind trip to Japan, and enjoyed all the gifties she brought back. Georgia gets excited about things her big sisters do, like Emily getting her first job! We had old friends visit for the Glorious Fourth, swam in the river, watched fireworks. And Georgia's aide, Tracey, took her for a fun-filled day at Waterville with her youngest daughter and two other friends. So although I've struggled with terrible feelings of guilt over not whipping Georgia in to top academic form during this summer break, as the months have rolled on, I've come to terms with the fact that we JUST. NEEDED. A. REST.

   I looked back over all of my calendar pages, and lesson plans of programs that we'd worked at, and worked at, and worked at since January. And I felt better. No, Georgia didn't drop all of the weight she'd gained since stopping her meds. No, her speech is not perfect. No, she's not reading on a 9th grade level. BUT despite our lack of regular mic work and CLS this summer, she has not regressed. In fact, we sat down on the couch just to read, and she did a remarkable job. On her own she is starting to TRY to decode words before spelling them. And when it gets tough, instead of just moaning, or acting frustrated and angry at the sight of what seems to be a long, complicated word, she will calmly say "Whew, that one looks hard", and then she'll simply spell it for me, and I will give the word to her. Right now I have her reading out of 2 books at different reading levels. One is an easy 2.3 level, the other is tougher at 4.5. But she is DOING it. I have to judge what kind of a day she's having, and then decide which level might do her the most good. If she's in a good mood and things have been smooth, I'll have her read the harder book. If she needs a confidence booster, we go to the lower level book. Yesterday we sat down to do some mic work (we're on AST-Reading lesson 22), and she read the passage in the phrasing section. I was blown away at how smoothly it went! When she finished she was smiling ear-to-ear and remarked "I didn't even need you to give me hardly any words!" And it was true! She felt so good about herself. Consider the fact that she was testing on a pre-primer level back in January. Yeah. She's come quite a distance.

    School starts in just about a week and a half. Georgia seems excited about going to high school. We've had a few moments of uncertainty, a few meltdowns, but after she went through registration her emotions seemed to smooth out. We are BOTH looking forward to the routine that the regular school year affords. And she has informed me that once school starts in earnest we will have to get back to our Stowell work. She seems happy about that prospect!

    I pinky-promise that I will try to do a better job of reporting Georgia's progress in this blog. It's gonna be an interesting year!

Pondering Pachyderms

 

    
   Not counting the thirteen days of Spring Break visitors, this has been kind of a ho-hum couple of weeks. Nothing spectacular happening on either end of Georgia's emotional spectrum. A few whiny outbursts, which were quickly quelled. A few ah-ha! moments, which seemed more the maquette in this process than finished monument. Progress? More like Slogress! Blah, blah, blah. I was doing some heavy sighing, and heavier doubting. Then a ponderous stroke of understanding wormed its way into my consciousness: We've been doing this Stowell work for 12 weeks now. In pregnancy terms that's 3 months of gestation. First trimester. A lot of serious work goes on in-utero during that time. Major roads paved on the path to personhood. But a huge amount of development still has to happen before that little person joins the rest of the world. This is how I've come to see our Stowell work. When you boil it right down, we're just in the first trimester. The very beginning. A TON of little developments are happening right now, which are just the building blocks for much greater things. Things that will happen down the road we're paving right now. Provided we don't get stuck in the fresh tar!

   I really do live for those *little* developments that seemingly just pop out of nowhere. It's the best feeling to see her figuring out words that I thought would totally stump her, and assumed she'd have to spell out.  I love that when I tell her "WOW. I thought you were going to need help with that word. Awesome job!", she absolutely beams! There's no pretentiousness. We are both truly pleased. Oh there are times, when she's in an irritable mood, that she might simply roll her eyes at me. But the eye-roll is usually accompanied by a shy smile, which tells me she really does appreciate the words of encouragement. This week she was able to read the words "drink", "mother's", "pounce" (that one was thrilling because she recognized the "ou" vowel combination and went from there!) and "hunters" without missing a beat. She also knew the word "powerful" because, as she said "I remembered that 'power' is in Power Rangers!". *Ah-hem*, I guess T.V. ain't all bad.
                                                                                                                                                          Another thrilling occurrence: Georgia was actually able to fairly easily maneuver the (dreaded) Starfish exercise without ANY fussing. Have I described The Starfish before? She perches on the edge of a chair and leans back, simultaneously spreading arms and legs out while dropping head over the back of the chair. Then she essentially pulls arms, legs, head back in and scrunches into a ball, with her right arm crossed over left, and right leg over left leg. She HATES this for the simple reason that she is not comfortable with dropping her head back. (it's that darn Morrow reflex!) In fact, she doesn't even want me to use the phrase "drop your head back". I have to say "relax your neck..." This week when we finished and she stood up, I said "Hey, you didn't squawk at all. And you did that so smoothly!" She smiled and said "I know, and I feel so calm!"  GASP! The Starfish made her feel CALM? Drop everything and....oh yeah, sorry....

   So All of these bits and pieces of progress just aid in our proverbial gestation, working to propel us forward. I know that after the appropriate amount of time Georgia will be ready to go out into the world. Of course, our gestational period may more closely resemble that of the pachyderm, but I'm fine with that. As long as we don't end up looking like crazy zoo animals!

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times

    At times this week has seemed to slog and stick like so much caramel in my teeth. I hate caramel. One day would see Georgia happily cooperating (ironically, one of her vocabulary words  this week), and the next her feet firmly planted in cement. Oh, she does the work. But on the cement-planted-feet-days she would whine and fuss and growl through each session so that it seemed she wasn't getting any benefit from the work at all. After too many days of this uphill slogging, Mommy had a breakdown! We were pounding away at the AST Reading lesson where she has to repeat syllable pairs after me: "splash-clash", "batch-hatch", "snitch-snatch". She was so bent out of shape, and irritated about having to work, that she absolutely could not distinguish the different sounds. She devolved into further ickyness. Finally I threw my hands up, cut off the CD, unplugged the sound board and said "That's it. I'm done. I can't stand the whining and complaining one minute more! I cannot help you if you refuse to help too." Then I brought the hammer down. "No more screen-time for the rest of the day!!" I slammed out of the room, into my room, dove onto my bed like a pouty teenager, and thought "I. CAN. NOT. DO. THIS." Now, after the "no more screen-time" edict I fully expected to garner a complete ranting, raving lunatic-type rage. And I waited for it to begin. But it didn't. Something completely astounding happened instead. I heard Georgia talking (not raging) in her room for a few minutes, then she opened her door and called "Mommy?" I replied "In here." She came in calmly, and with a completely modulated voice said "I'd like to try again please." She climbed up on the bed and began to voice her frustrations in an almost hushed tone. She apologized. Finally after talking things out, I said "OK, I'll give it another try." Remarkably, she was able to not only breeze through each syllable pair, she could tell me what made one word vary from the other. "So, what letter changed to make "'clutch' say 'crutch'", her eyes flitted away for a minute and she said "Change the 'l' to a 'r'!" Wow. I even pushed it so far as to ask her what the vowels sounds were, and she could tell me! After we finished, we talked together about the difference it made from when she was irritated, to when she was calm. We determined that it was, in fact, better to remain calm.

     And so we had a really great afternoon session on another day, and were both remarking on it. I said "Yes! Isn't it so nice when things run smoothly and we don't have any drama? NO DRAMA! WATCH OUT FOR THE DRAMA LLAMA, IT'S SPITS!" Georgia was walking out of the room when I boomed this, but as she got into the kitchen I heard her start to giggle, and giggle, and then say to herself "Drama llama. It spits!" Then she started doing that hilarious hiccoughing, snorting giggle she does when she finds something particularly amusing. To see her gaining in maturity, self control, and growing in her sense of humor is quite something. My friend Judy recounted to me how she always made note when her kids were little of when they were particularly irritable, unmanageable or just plain pains-in-the-ass, because it usually meant that they were about to conquer another developmental milestone. I'm keeping that in mind with Georgia during all of these ups and downs, hoping the sticky caramel days mean she's morphing through into a higher developmental stage. Morphing into smooth rainbow sherbet days! I LIKE rainbow sherbet.

Transcendent reactions

Successful navigation out of near-total meltdown yesterday. Georgia was complaining bitterly about having to do CLS (Core Learning Skills training) a.k.a.: THE DREADED EXCERCISES! As I was trying to explain to her why these are so important, she just simply began to dissolve into a blubbering, anxiety-ridden mess. I got her to sit down and breathe. Then I reached across the table to hold her hands, (she let me!) and had her try to verbalize what was getting her so worked-up. Here is what was gleaned: Georgia is tired of "being dyslexia", (which is not entirely unlike "Being Jonn Malkovich" I imagine), and wishes she were "Just like Emily! Why can't I be like Emily. She not dyslexia!" She has also heard that there aren't aids or special classrooms for kids who struggle at the High School, and so is terrified of being unceremoniously dumped into a "regular" classroom with no support whatsoever next year. I told her that would not happen, that Daddy and I will meet with the school in the next few months, and work all of this out. She's worried that if I come up to work with her at the High School, people will notice, and she will be seen as "different". She cried, "WHY am I diff'rent? I'm TIRED of being diff'rent than everyone else!" Ugh. This just broke my heart. I wanted to say to her that one reason we're doing these programs with Stowell is so that she WILL seem less "different"....but I felt that was a terrible thing to voice. Georgia is such an interesting girl! She's got a great sense of humor! She's insightful! So I told her that all this is to help her feel more confident, and secure, so that maybe one day she CAN help herself in the classroom. "It's going to take a few more years, and you have to be patient. It's going to take A LOT more hard work, and you have to be willing. Can you be patient? Are you willing?" We shook on it. She wiped her tears, blew her nose, and got down to work with a smile.

                                                                           
Amazingly we are at the end of our Phonics Actives program. But even though we've gotten through all of the lessons this doesn't mean we can't, or shouldn't do them anymore. I fully intend to keep going over older lessons, but right now I think more energy can be spent on AST-Reading. It seems to be taking us a bit longer to make it through each step in this first lesson. Georgia is doing pretty well, and even though I worry over whether her speech will ever be totally smooth, or her reading on grade-level, I do think she's making progress. I just have to keep in mind the larger picture. We've only been at this a few months. In the words of the nineteenth century transcendentalist Robert Frost: "But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep."Or maybe I should follow those immortal words spoken by the transcendent Dorie The Fish: "Just keep swimming! Just keep swimming! Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming!"


 Bob, meet Dorie......

Aw, nuts!

We've added yet another program, and I'm actually excited about it! AST-Reading. So now we'll be working on 3 AST (auditory stimulation and training) programs, rotating them out each day. Yes, EVERY DAY, MONDAY THROUGH SUNDAY.  

First of all, here is a good summary of what Auditory Stimulation is: http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-auditory-stimulation.htm
This is what we refer to as our "Mic work". In the program that we follow with Stowell, Georgia listens to 1 of 2 "prescribed" Samonas CDs, depending on what work we are doing, and wears a mic so that she can hear herself speak. As I've mentioned before we are currently working on AST-Language and AST-Phonics Actives. I've briefly summarized in earlier posts what we do, but here's the broader view: (the REALLY broad view): (you might want to pause here to take a bathroom break, and get a snack):

AST-Language uses picture cards, and involves the instructor (Me! Surprise!) giving the student (Georgia! Woo!) words to describe each picture. There are 3 steps to each part. An example: one picture card has six photos of people doing various jobs. Part One: Nouns: Step One:: I name each person (Fireman, Builder, Workers, Policeman, Musician, Teacher), then Georgia repeats each after me. I name and point at random, until she can name them all clearly and with ease. Step Two: I say each person's "name", and she identifies by pointing to that picture and saying the name. Step Three: I point to a picture, and Georgia identifies by saying the name. Part Two: Adjective, Verb "to be":  as the header says, we're adding an adjective and forms of verb "to be". We run through all 3 steps like for part one. (Example: Smart builder.- The builder is smart.; Busy workers.- The workers are busy.) Part Three: Questions and Answers with the verb "to be" and adjective: is a question and answer exercise designed to further strengthen auditory memory, and work on articulation and flow: "Is the worker busy? Yes, the worker is busy". With the question and answer portion we break it up during one of the steps so that on one go-through Georgia asks the question, and I answer. Next I ask, and she answers. Part Four: Adjectives, action verbs, and objects: "The smart builder is studying plans." Again, we run through all three steps for this part until she is clear in her articulation and can remember the phrasing.
We've actually had a lot of fun with this one. It may sound a bit plodding, but we've been able to laugh when she gets tongue-tied, and make jokes along the way. While working on this at Stowell, one photo was supposed to be about two boys, but one of them clearly was a girl with a very short haircut. This was not overlooked by Georgia, and she had to correct it EVERY time she saw it.

AST-Phonics Actives begins by reviewing the vowel sounds she's learned up to that particular lesson. Then we go through 6 other steps using four columns of words.
So, Step One: Review all learned vowel sounds. Pretty much sums that up. Step Two: Listen and Repeat: I dictate syllables (words) in first column, one at a time. Georgia repeats, and points to and says  just the vowel sound. She uses the vowel chart for this. Step Three: Listen and Repeat Auditory Chain: I say the first two words (or syllables) in column two, Georgia repeats. Then I say the 2nd and 3rd, she repeats. Then I say the 3rd and 4th..... until we've gotten through every word. Example: "hurl; hail", "hail; mail", "mail; marl". The syllables create a chain in which only one sound is changed. This is REALLY difficult for Georgia. Step Four: Auditory Sound Blending: I say each sound in the given word, Georgia instantly blends the sounds to make the complete word. Totally auditory. This step has gotten much easier for her!  Step Five: Visual Spelling: I say a word. Georgia repeats the word and mentally pictures the spelling of the word. She then spells the word. SHE HATES THIS ONE. But, she has gotten so much better at it. It's amazing to see! Step Six: Mental Manipulation of Sounds: I orally spell a word. Georgia visualizes the letters to "read" the word. I then manipulate the word in one way, or another by changing a sound or letter. I then ask her to "read" or visually spell the new word. She also hates this step, but for someone who says she can't "picture" letters at all, she's gotten remarkably good at this! Step Seven: Syllable Reading: Georgia reads the vowel sound and then the whole syllable doing down a column. On alternate columns, she has to mentally notice the vowel sound but ORALLY read only the whole word. Again, she has made huge strides in this step!

The final portion of this learning trifecta:
  AST-Reading. The phonetic/language content emphasis of our first lesson is: sh, ch, tch. Step One: Listen and Repeat Syllable Discrimination: I say a syllable pair (ship-chip), Georgia repeats. We're looking for clear artic of ALL sounds. Step Two: Listen and Repeat Phrases: I say 2 phrases (chicks will hatch - chickens will hatch), Georgia repeats. Step Three: Contrasting Sentences: there are 6 pairs of sentences. (1st pair; The catcher was ready for the pitch. The catcher was not ready for the pitch.) I read each sentence with appropriate intonation and rhythm. Georgia repeats and taps each sentence....one tap per syllable. This is really working to build her memory as well. Step Four: Phrasing: consists of a four-sentence passage, split up in two columns. First column the passage is broken up at about 3-4 words per line. Georgia reads one line, then pauses before moving down to the next line. The second column is about 6-7 words per line. She is to pause at the end of each phrase, and pause longer at each comma and ending punctuation. Step Five: Visual Clusters for Decoding: We have word cards for this. I show the card ("This is the word 'ship'") and rapidly ask questions ("What letters say /sh/?" "What does the 'i-p' say?" "What does the 's-h' say?") to help her to see and identify logical visual clusters. (I do not point to them, she needs to see it as a whole). Step Six: Spell-Read: I use a book about on her reading level and she spells and then reads EACH WORD. If she doesn't recognize the word after spelling it, I just tell her and have her repeat. As the instruction says: "This helps her to notice all of the letters in a word and improves orientation and synchrony between what she is seeing and hearing when reading."
                                                                                                       

And that's it in a nutshell. Albeit, a very large and complicated nut. One that any squirrel with even the smallest amount of discernment should abandon. But not me. Well, for one thing: I'm not a squirrel. Yet I like to imagine that I might have a *bit* higher degree of perspicacity than your common ground squirrel. So I'll just continue trying to crack this nut until we get to that meaty center!

Hormonal Hydra

Whoa. The weeks are just flying by. We've gotten into a good routine with our Stowell work schedule, and so I have taken a full day sub job for the 17th. Georgia is not happy about it since it means I won't be coming up to school to work with her in the morning. She's worried we won't be able to get everything done! I told her it's a Friday, so we can move things around a bit, and not to fret. But as Brad said "One thing about Georgia....even if she dislikes doing a lesson, she dislikes not doing it more." If you know Georgia you understand that she is a creature of habit, lover of sameness. So I'm trying not to disturb our new routine too much. Some details of her schedule do change from week-to-week, though. For instance, the first few weeks she listened to her Samonas CD for 15 minutes, twice a day. Last week Liz changed that protocol, moving us onto another CD, and 30 minutes of listening in the morning before Georgia gets out of bed. This was working out really well until Monday dawned this week, and Georgia spawned another head. And fangs. I was noticing that she appeared to be modulating her voice much better, and seemed calmer. But then -BAM - hello Hydra! She is 14, however, so I suppose hormones could be blamed. Oy vey!

It's times like this I have to try really, really, REALLY hard to remind myself that all of this hassle is for a greater good. As Teddy Roosevelt said: "Nothing worth having was ever achieved without effort." But he also said: "If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for all your trouble, you wouldn't sit for a month!" I think that pretty much sums up my frame of mind. So it helps when there are glimmers of positive steps forward. Like when Georgia will announce some bit of knowledge, or speak a thought in a complete phrase. It's even inspiring to me when she says something sarcastic, and understands what she's saying is funny. The other day we were driving to school and I was lecturing Maggie about God-knows-what. I said "Well, I hate to say I told you so..." and without missing a beat Georgia says in a deadpan voice "You already did." I even loved it when she proclaimed of our sleepy, fat, psycho kitty, (after he'd killed and dismembered a very large bird in the kitchen) "Oh, look at him! He looks so innocent of such a crime!" I heard a distinctive "S" at the end of "looks", and she meticulously pronounced "in-no-cent". Plus I just really enjoyed the entire phrasing she used, it made me chuckle!

I know that each week is likely to be different from the last. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. Especially if we can mark progress being made! But it would be nice to know ahead of time if I'll be packing a lunch for Hydra, or Harmonia.

Nurse Ratched on the job!

I had a remarkable conversation last week at Lowe's Home Improvement with the young guy who came to help me figure out which lamp to buy to hang over Georgia's work desk. I explained the purpose of the lamp: that I am setting up a space to do work with my daughter, "she's got some struggles!". He nodded knowingly and said "Oh, yeah, I hear ya. My son and my nephew have some issues of their own!" That, of course, started me asking questions. Shocking, right? I'm like my mother in that I can strike up an in-depth conversation with pretty much anyone, anywhere. But, I'm also like my dad in that the oddest people seem to seek me out and talk to me. I have to do some quick assessments sometimes "Hmm, this could either turn out fun, or scary..." As it happens, my Lowe's assistant has two sons: a 6 year old in Kindergarten who is super-smart, on ADHD meds, but still struggling; and a 3 year old who is exhibiting anger for which they can find no reason. His nephew is 8, and severely autistic. He helps care for him several days a week. This guy looked SO young, but he is very obviously committed to doing right by his kids. I gave him some ideas of therapies and school programs to look into. When he described to me some of the odd behaviors his 6 year old was exhibiting on the meds, (hearing bees buzzing around his head!) it was my turn to nod knowingly. I told him Georgia had the same thing happen to her on Concerta. His eyes opened really wide, his jaw dropped, and he said almost breathlessly "I thought I was crazy! I thought my son was crazy! I've never had anyone else tell me that they had that same thing happen!" I felt like my head would explode with all of the information I wanted to impart! But it just wasn't the time or place. I was worried his boss would give him a hard time for talking with me for too long. I wondered about getting a resource packet together for him and bringing it back up to Lowe's. Maybe I will!

Our second week of Distance Learning went pretty well. Liz gave us another "step" to add: The AST Language portion. This involves using picture cards, and essentially talking or telling a story about each picture. It's covering a lot of ground: auditory processing, expressive and receptive language, visual organization, and sensory input. This is all done on the mic, along with a Samonas CD on headphones. Georgia has a really hard time blending certain sounds together. "S" is particularly difficult. She'll often leave off the beginning OR the end of a word with "S". When she was little it was kind of cute. She'd ask for a "nack" instead of "snack", that kind of thing. But at age 14, it's a bit of problem. It makes her sound so much younger, and people will glance sort of sideways at us with a look that says "What is *wrong* with that kid?" As we're going along in this lesson though, she's doing a lot more self-correction. With a prompt of "what's that *little* word we're looking for...?" ("is") She'll say "IZZZZZ!" She also just seems a lot more chatty, and personable, and not nearly as sensitive to sounds or touch. Progress. Slowly but surely.

I'm letting Geosie off the hook for mic work today, since she woke up with a stomach bug. You know, I try to be a compassionate mother. It's a little challenging for me though, since I grew up with a nurse mother and doctor father. If you weren't running a fever, didn't have any bones sticking out, and weren't having *obvious* convulsions, the standard response to illness was "Go to school! You'll feel better!" I've commiserated with other Adult Children of Medical Professionals, and they corroborate my story. I used to think school nurses must have some sort of mutated compassion gene, since they seem to exhibit a higher degree of benevolence toward sick children. But then, there is that pesky modern policy of not sending your kid to school until they've been fever and vomit-free for at least 24 hours. So maybe it's not so much a greater degree of empathy, just fear of the policy-makers that compels them to phone me when my child complains of a movable, mystery stomachache. In fact, I do remember the school nurses back in the day didn't readily call home. They tried to handle things first. They'd tell you to lie down on one of the cots with the crisp white sheets, and turn the lights low, then bustle out on their squeaky shoes to smoke a cigarette in the other room while you rested. Twenty minutes usually did the trick, (long enough to miss the quiz you forgot to study for) and then it was back to class. Ahhh, the good old days before smoking bans and the frenzied War On Bacteria! Still, I'll keep Miss G home tomorrow. If I pump her up with soup, I'm sure I can get at least *some* work out of her!