Every time I watch Sarah doing gymnastics I feel amazed and grateful and a tiny bit teary. Gymnastics provides a clear reminder of how far Sarah has come in her physical abilities. Tuesday was her last gymnastics class until I sign them up for another. We are going to take a break for the summer while I, in theory, teach the girls to swim. I have also signed them up for a ballet class. I observed the class and the teacher seemed lovely and playful. They start at the end of June.
On Friday, Sarah had her last day of preschool ever. She has been in preschool for 5 years. For 2 1/2 years she was in a class just for kids with special needs. Then for a little while she wasn’t in school at all, outside of the SR room. Then she started one morning a week at a preschool that was comprised of neurotypical 3-5 year olds. It was at this school that she spent the last 2 1/2 years in terms of school outside of the home. She gradually moved to going two mornings a week and then three mornings a week, with Sonia or me in attendance. This last year Sonia was in the hall 85% of the time. For kindergarten, Sarah will be with one of the teachers she has had for the past 2 1/2 years. It will be half day and it will be a very small class. As of now, the teacher thinks she doesn’t need an extra helper. The night before Sarah’s last day of preschool I felt overwhelmed with emotion. I feel like I just made it to the finish line of a long race. I certainly still have my visions and hopes for the future, but this is a huge moment. I so much didn’t follow a traditional path but I did get us to this moment that I envisioned long ago, of Sarah being in a class with her developmental-age peers and only moving to a new level of class when she is truly ready.
I also discovered that we have already surpassed the requirement for homeschooling hours. This doesn’t actually change our daily routines or goals, but I do feel a bit of pressure lifted. For next year I will officially home school Sarah in addition to the kindergarten because the kindergarten is half day and I think she needs to be in full day schooling based on her age. Also, even if I didn’t need to officially homeschool, I would still keep doing what we have been doing.
Some of the word cards now have three words on them. One of the words is a small connector word, but still! This doesn’t seem to phase her a bit.
I have had a few small/huge personal breakthroughs. I realized that often with the word and math packs I was pushing my agenda without always connecting with Sarah first. Now I have started joining her if she is isming and waiting for us to connect and then working the words into the play scenario. This is so much more fun and effective and I don’t think it actually takes much more time than asking her for her attention and then getting grumpy as I try to force it. After a helpful conversation with M., I clarified that I also want to connect in this way when I am going to make other requests of Sarah, such as getting dressed. At first I was getting hugely ambitious and wanting to always parent perfectly no matter what. The thing with that goal is that it is actually coming from seeing my current mode as lacking and it is setting the bar impossibly and unspecifically high. Instead, I am setting the specific goal of connecting first when it is time to request or do words or math. That is all. That is do-able. The times that I don’t do it are more notable and I don’t enjoy them as much. I have had huge achievements of putting a pack of words back undone when the moment wasn’t right. This has helped me in a few unrelated scenarios of not getting what I want to just let it go easily.
Friday morning I helped Sarah get herself dressed! With no upset from either of us. With fun and play!! Oh my goodness!!! Talking with M. had helped me think slightly differently about how to help Sarah with getting dressed because we realized that Sarah now allows hair washing pretty easily and giggles when I get water on her face. She likes it when things go wrong. We have known this about her sense of humor, but I hadn’t applied it to getting dressed and how I could play up things going wrong or playfully demanding “Are you gonna take off your shirt or am I?”
I have also had more and more moments of truly, fully, 100% being comfortable when the girls are upset. In the past I would pretend to be comfortable but I was actually uncomfortable, wanting it to stop, and tightly explaining their choices as if they were wrong for not choosing happiness in the moment. Now, when they get upset I am reminding myself that it is truly ok. For real. I tell myself it is music to my ears and there is no need to shorten the duration in any way. I think this may actually shorten the duration. Even if it doesn’t, I am feeling way more comfortable and comforting. This also helps me enforce boundaries or rules more easily because I remind myself it is truly ok if they don’t like what I say and get upset. The times that I am not so truly ok with it all, I am usually hungry. My step-mother used to remind my dad that there was no quitting his PhD program after 10pm at night. I love this. I translate it to “there is no quitting on an empty stomach.” I can’t give up or feel like a failure if I am hungry, since those so often go hand in hand. First, eat (or pee or nap or turn on the AC). Then I can reevaluate the situation.
This morning we had a tiny/huge momentary miracle. Amy was driving the cozy coupe and Sarah didn’t immediately get upset and try to force her way in. Sarah kept eating her breakfast. After a minute or two then she got upset. I went over to her, with my true comfort about her upset, looked in her eyes and said I knew it could feel hard to wait. I asked Amy to move to another room so Sarah wouldn’t feel so jealous. Sarah loved the word “jealous” and started talking about feeling jealous, though clearly talking about the concept helped her shift into sparkly eyed contentment.
Leave a Reply