Emotional Regulation

I was really proud of Miss Iz yesterday.  She did such a great job handling emotions!  She's been dealing with pretty severe anxiety ever since her open heart surgery at seven months old and has been in and out of therapy since shortly before she turned two.  As she grows and matures, the manifestation of her anxiety changes.  Adding an anxiety med last year helped as well and we moved from her very long selective mutism stage into what I call the "Fight or Flight" stage.

One of the things we deal with is the fact that regular ordinary frustrations for her age can often kickstart the anxiety and then we go from 0 to 300 in a very short amount of time.  She does OT as well as meets with a therapist to help and she and I do a lot of work at home.  She had been making big improvements and then school just set her back to the point we pulled her out.  She's made great strides again and those fight or flight outbursts are getting further and further apart.  Yesterday morning W had OT and then we ran errands to finish off our grocery shopping for the weekend and next week.  She did awesome navigating the crowds (sometimes just having so many people around puts her on high alert and it takes very little to tip her over the edge), she handled being told "no" to things like a champ, she listened to instructions fairly well.  She needed some reminders here and there but nothing escalated and she chose appropriate ways to express the emotions she was having.  She used her words, did her breathing, when we needed to we simply moved together to a quieter part of the store, we talked things out.

We talk a lot about how we all have big emotions and that that is okay and normal and we are supposed to have big emotions.  But we have to choose how to handle those big emotions--we can't hurt others or ourselves or destroy things.  We talk a lot about making safe choices and that even grownups have to still keep working on things, too.  She may not always be in control enough to make the choices she needs to (which is why she's homeschooled now--the school was unwilling to step in when needed to keep her and others safe.  She knows that if she's out of control, I'll step in to keep her safe.  She doesn't like getting "tight hugs" when she's upset but she's a smart kid and when she's calm, she can tell you she needs them, even when she can't ask for them), but she's working on making them a habit so she doesn't have to think about them.  We practice when she's calm and she's applying her calm down strategies to other people in the house.  I was irritated with W this morning because he kept trying to climb on me and almost knocked my coffee over and I asked him to get down and go into the living room--Iz came over and starting rubbing my back in long firm strokes and told me that pressure input is really good for staying calm when you start to get mad LOL (Iz's response to W irritating her is usually screaming and crying and we are working on that because the loud wailing won't fix the problem--using  her words will be more effective because then even if W doesn't stop because he's two, I can hear what the problem is and come help.  I used my words like she is supposed to tell W to stop and go in the other room but she figured some pressure input wouldn't hurt).  She's a funny, sweet, thoughtful little girl :)

We talked it through....

Iz had OT today.  When Miss J brought her back to me, she said they had a really great session.  Miss J chose some difficult things to work on--in the past, Iz would have gotten frustrated and shut down but today, they were able to talk it through, figure it out, and keep on working and get it done :D  This is why she's homeschooled, so we can work on those skills and get her to a spot where she can return to school.  It is FANTASTIC that she did so well today :)

Miss Iz and W were sure excited about school this morning!  We didn't even make it through breakfast before Iz was doing math worksheets and then they finished eating while watching a Magic Schoolbus episode about air pressure :p

This afternoon was OT.  One of Iz's goals is to be able to tolerate trying foods, particularly vegetables.  She used to eat just about everything but over the last year, the list has dwindled dramatically and she was complaining about the feel of food.  This past week she has skipped many a meal because it didn't look like it would "feel right" and she refused to eat.  So OT includes a bit of feeding therapy as well to overcome the sensory aversion.  She tried all kinds of stuff at OT today :p  Now if we could just get her to eat at home!  She helped me cook dinner (chili) and she actually ate an entire serving so progress, eh?

Later in the afternoon we had to take the Busy Little B back again to do an intake appointment/evaluation with one of the psychologists.  He's going to do a ten week social skills group with other kids his age starting next month.  B is friendly but his friendships are very surface level and he doesn't actually interact with kids very much.  Hopefully this will help!

Iz had developmental clinic today.  We are checking in every six months to a year depending on how things are going and developmental takes a look at all therapies and things to see if we are missing anything.  At the moment we are doing all we can be doing but Miss E did give me a list of homeschooling resources (she has several homeschooled kids in her practice) and did do a referral to the new neuropsychologist to see about some educational testing if Iz is old enough for it.  With both older brothers diagnosed with the same learning disabilities and Iz struggling with some of the same things they did at this age, Miss E said it can't hurt to check into it early because if we can catch it now, we can work on it earlier.

Overall a good visit :)

A very busy day

We had a busy day yesterday and it felt like I was constantly trying to catch up.

We didn't make it through our homeschooling list as quickly as we normally do so Iz and I ended up doing her "research project" in the waiting room of the rehabilitation center the kids do things like PT, OT, and speech at :p  A couple times a week I pick a topic for her to search online for--we are starting young on the basics of research and reliable sources--so instead of me teaching her something, she's getting the information on her own (sort of, I still read it to her and help explain it so she can understand).  Yesterday's topic was "why things float" so we had a good discussion on density and buoyancy :)  Why, you may ask?

After the Busy Little B had OT (and we ran home for half an  hour to wait for the Super Kid to come home from school so we could go right back to the rehab center) and The Super Kid had both speech and OT, we headed for the gym for the next session of swim lessons!  They were so excited :D  Got there, got all changed, got down to the pool, waited for the teachers and other kids to show up......and nobody did.  There were adult classes in the pool and lap swim but no swim lessons.  OOPS.  Apparently I marked down January in my calendar but big kid lessons are in February.  Sorry, kids!  Baby W is the one who does lessons in January (starting tomorrow).  So my dejected kids got changed and we went home to eat and go to bed :p

Homeschooling

We are finding our homeschooling "feet" and getting into a routine :)

A dear friend of mine and her mum tracked down some books and resources for us and shipped them off--Iz loved going to the post office to pick them up, unpacking them, deciding where to keep them, and most of all, reading them!  We have already read a few of them multiple times and one has made its way to the first thing we do every day (the Monster Alphabet book) as a review of what the letters are because she is still working on letter recognition.

Someone in the local homeshcool facebook page suggested the Read Aloud Revival page as a good book list resource so I followed her and have had the bonus benefits of getting both Iz and the Busy Little B into this month's reading challenge (they are so excited about it) as well as a post about keeping organized and planning out your school day.  We are using a spiral notebook to keep track daily of what we plan to do and what we actually do.  Iz loves to check off the box after we complete an activity and I have been having her fill in the titles of the books we read to practice handwriting.  We usually spend an hour or two (depending on how fast she breezes through her work.  Right now we are still in the review phase where she already knows a lot of this stuff but since I do not know exactly what they worked on in school, we started from the beginning and she's moving pretty quickly through the stuff right now.  I fully expect as things get  unfamiliar or harder we will have to up how much time we spend) on math and reading activities in the morning and try to do something hands-on in the afternoon.

Her favorite hands-on so far is baking :p  I have her measure out the ingredients and I usually give her a smaller measuring cup than what we need so she needs to measure out a couple times and then add her measurements together to ensure she has the right total.  This morning we watched a Bill Nye the Science Guy episode on the earth's crust so after we do our baking, we are going to make  our own volcano in the sink, just like Bill did on the show (side bonus, it will clean my drain and garbage disposal LOL).  There is a new dinosaur exhibit opening at the natural history museum next week so I think we need to add in some lessons on dinosaurs so we can do a field trip :p

We are officially homeschooling

I filed the paperwork a few weeks ago.  Iz is sad she doesn't get to be with her teacher anymore but we just don't feel it is a safe environment for her (and her psychiatrist agrees.  He is not at all happy with how the school handled the situation and their "plan" going forward.  He wanted to get her moved to one of the therapeutic day schools but our local district won't consider it until she has multiple incidents over a long stretch of time.  I'm not willing to wait for many bad things to happen to get her moved).  But she has improved so much mentally and emotionally since she has starting staying home!  We worked so hard to get her into a school program and it is so disappointing it has ended this way.  But I have my girl back--sure, she still has moments of anxiety and struggle but its so much better than the last few months as her mental and emotional health nose dived.

She is doing awesome with schoolwork.  She loves to do "school" and we signed up for an online program the Super Kid used to use to practice his math skills on.  Iz does math and language arts through this website and she is going through the modules so quick :p  She's in kindergarten but some of her math skills are in the third grade level.  She says she likes that the math at home is harder than school because its more fun to do.  She is impatiently waiting for me to get off the computer so she can do school :p

At the moment, we are being very relaxed because its winter break and the boys are all home but once they go back to school, Iz and I will make school more structured.  There's a local homeschool group that does field trips and playdates for socialization so we are watching the calendar for things age appropriate for her--she is looking forward to making new friends who do school at home like her ;)