Helping Children Recover from Brain Injury
A, As. Ases. Dog. dogs. Doges. Is. ises. Iseses.
Joey grins at me as he explores the newly discovered -s button on his device. It’s fun to be able to suddenly add ‘s’ to your words, and he’s enjoyed seeing just how many ‘s’s he can add to a word. At first I felt put out by his distracted activity with the ‘s’ button, but then I remembered that if Joey is going to learn how to make words plural, he is going to have to know how to use the +s button. So explore away. Sillyeseseseses [Read more…]
Since last week’s post, I’ve gotten texts, calls, and questions about how Joey’s first day of school went. Far more than anyone asking about my own daughters’ first day of school. But I get it. Joey is Joey, and we all spent all summer waiting for this day.
I felt very lucky that my session with Joey was scheduled for a few hours after his first day of kindergarten. I couldn’t wait to hear what he had to say about his day, and how he felt about it all. In my mind, I would sit down and he would immediately start talking non-stop.
Of course, what really happened is exactly what I had already experienced when I tried to talk to my own daughter about her first day of school. My questions were met with a big grin, and then the subject was changed a few times. These five year olds had already lived their first day – who wants to talk about it again? The five year olds don’t have time to slow down and chat – they have things to do!
Slowly, I remembered that the only way to get information out of my own daughter was to ask distinct, direct questions – so I changed my questions and my expectations, and gained a little more insight.
So how was it? [Read more…]
It’s here! Today – the day we’ve been talking about for months now – is finally here. Joey started kindergarten. I haven’t gotten to see him yet to hear about it, but what I know from this picture tells me so much about what he thought about it.
Here is a summary of all the steps we took to get ready for today. We hope these ideas will help others on their journey for preparing their own children for school.
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I watch as Joey studies his screen. He keeps selecting the same incorrect button, but after knowing Joey awhile, I know he’s doing this because he’s determined to somehow get to the correct word. When I watch his errors, I realize he’s often selecting the word directly under the word he is trying to select.
For me, as an adult, this would be ridiculously frustrating. For Joey, it’s just a part of expressing himself. [Read more…]
As we finished up reading Pete the Cat’s, Rocking in my School Shoes, I stopped and looked at Joey. I could tell he was thinking hard about something. I told him this, and asked him to share what he was thinking about. He immediately went into his emotions page on his eye gaze device and said, “Brave.”
Brave.
He is thinking about being brave to go to kindergarten. [Read more…]
