Other skills

I realise we've been focusing an awful lot on Emily's speech development, but there are other areas that we are going to need to work on soon so she doesn't languish behind.

Potty training is at the top of our agenda. It's one of those things that just sounds like a pain, you don't want to do and you hope will just mysteriously sort itself out. We know it won't, we know it will be painful and probably messy but Emily will thank us for it in the long run.

This morning I was watching Emily eating breakfast and ... well, eating is ANOTHER area of concern. Anyway, Em had her elbows on the table as she was eating and it just made me realise that manners like this will be another area we need to get her to do.

We're trying with please and thank you, but no elbows, eating with cutlery (and not hands).

The list grows.

Em also tried to dress herself today. She took the wrong end of her pyjama trousers and tried to pull them onto her leg. A for effort, F for result. I tried to get her to do the same thing, the right way round, with her actual trousers but she was having none of it.

Teaching and training your child is a full time job. I realise that once over the hurdle of language delay we're not on easy street, but just the last day or so I've been realising how much there is to do, just in this phase of her life that's above and beyond her difficulties.

Being a parent's hard.

Related articles

• Rules for Potty Training Success (trainyourdogs.wordpress.com)
• Help Potty Training an Autistic Kid (parenting-success.com)
• Potty Training and Your Preschooler: Advice for Parents (children.webmd.com)
• Day in the life of potty training a toddler (parenting-success.com)

Emily's new words

When she's not hacking up her dinner on my shoes and jacket, Emily's been reciting her new words to Sue and I.

As with most of her vocab, it's within the confines of her books and any real world application is still alluding us.

This morning, she's been reading her Dora The Explorer book and it takes place at night. All I've heard from her as she turns the pages is "moon" and "stars". Of course, if we go out on the next clear night and look up, I really don't envision her putting 2 and 2 together and making the real world application.

On the other hand, associating and understanding in ANY context is pretty good and I'm quite proud of her accomplishments in that regard.

Assessed for help

Picking Em up tonight at Fennies, they gave me the "good news" that she's been assessed by the council workers and she has been referred on for further help for her development.

Sue and I are to meet with the people next week to discuss a plan of attack, but Fennies were quite optimistic that she'll get the help she needs, they'll be able to get guidance on how to help her and there'll be funding to be had so things shouldn't hurt too much, financially.

All this help, I just hope there is nothing actually wrong with Em. All this time Sue and I are kept going by the thought that she'll get sorted eventually. I really hope someone doesn't actually turn around at some point and say "actually..."

More interactivity verbally

It's been a good year so far for Emily.

She's coming on leaps and bounds in her development. I spy her occasionally reading a book or reciting a book and I can actually tell what book she is reciting, which is cool.

She's still not engaging Sue or I in conversation or even requests, apart from "read", but Sue been able to augment that by saying to Emily "read please..." to which Emily responds "Mummy".

Emily is also saying "face" quite a bit when we say it's time to "wash hands". Although she's not creating verbal dialogue, something upstairs is putting various terms together, which is good.

We've been watching this DVD developed by learning development people called "Sookie & Finn" and trying to emulate some of the ways they discuss everyday objects. Hopefully with this video, our interaction and further mental stimulation we're close to a massive break through.

Language therapist

We had another session with Karen, the language therapist today.

Emily showed more promise than the last time we saw her, but she is still WOEFULLY behind other children of her age.

Hopefully the more sessions we do, the better she'll get.

One amazing thing came out of today's session - seeing Emily interact PROPERLY with a jigsaw puzzle. With all the puzzles at home she really doesn't take much notice, trying to press the pieces into any old hole before becoming bored and wandering off. Today she not only focused on the puzzle, she also over came various frustrations in trying to get the piece to sit in the hole correctly.

Watching her doing this really gave me hope... until we had our Hairy Maclary meltdown. Karen brought out a board book just before we left and upon taking it away from Emily, the nuclear meltdown occurred. I had to recite Hairy Maclary's Bone to her to calm her down.

There's still something rather oddly strange about hearing a child crying their eyes out, only to stop to say a word like "horse" or "bone" and then go back into the crying.

Portage visit

It seems that with every week that goes by, we have a meeting with another organisation to try and help Emily.

This morning we had an initial assessment by Portage, a "home-visiting educational service for pre-school children with additional support needs and their families" (not the act of hauling a canoe over dry land from one body of water to another). It lasted about an hour and, even though there's still issues with Emily, it's good to hear that we're doing all the right things. Just wish the right things resulted in the right outcome instead of a child that still needed to be assessed.

We're going to get a home visit every three weeks from Portage to see how things are going and give us hints, tips and strategies to get Emily on the straight and narrow developmentwise.

For those playing along at home, we're now seeing the Sutton council language therapist, on the waiting list for a paediatrician, Fennie's is sending round a therapist in January to view Emily's progress at the nursery and we're on the list to see a private paediatrician in December.

The stuff is all there in Emily's head, and we can see it dripping out in dribs and drabs. Hopefully ONE of these organisations has the key to getting it flowing out in great gushes.

Emily IS Brick Heck

Brick Heck

The more I watch "The Middle", the more I realise that Emily is very likely going to be Brick Heck. He loses himself in books, would rather read something than play with something and doesn't really care about social interaction. Well, the main comparisons end there, but they're enough to have be start calling Emily "Brick".

Emily's also developing some rather odd habits. She now likes to stand on her head with her bum in the air and just sort of balance on her neck. She's been doing it at Nursery and the first time freaked them out enough to let me know they thought she was going to break her neck.

We've had some crazy times in the last 2.5-odd years and this isn't even the tip of the iceberg.

I just hope that her Brick tendencies subside and she develops her social side as well. There's no prize for the bookiest girl in the library.

Learning's going well

We've been worried about Emily's learning and talking and in recent weeks it's been going a LOT better than it has ever.

She's starting to say things in context, and not being prompted. Tonight she said goodbye to Helen without being asked, and said cake when she looked at one of Sue's dessert chocolate eclairs.

Last night, while watching the Gruffalo on DVD, she said something that resembled butterfly when said creature appeared on screen.

Wordwise, she's already saying "read" with book in hand, to an annoying level. However, instead of saying "drink" or similar, she's just letting out incessant screams.

We're getting there, and I can't wait until she's talking in multiple words.

We're off to see the language specialist again tomorrow, and I'd like to think that she's going to see quite an improvement in Emily.

Sesame Street and Emily

While the Sesame Street DVDs contain enough warnings to ward you off ever letting your child watch them (apparently we're all brain dead retards for watching them in the 70s) it DIDN'T stop me buying some "old school" episodes on DVD for Emily.

While on holiday I put an episode on featuring the song "Exit" by Little Chrissy and the Alphabeats. It may be from 1974, but it didn't stop Emily dancing and singing along.

If that's what the warning was all about, I fully embrace ignoring it because Emily just loves that song, as well as all the other letters and numbers the episode are brought to you by.

Showing signs of improvement

Last night we played with Emily, using jigsaw puzzles and the farm play set she received for her birthday to bring Old McDonald to life. It was quite good and I think Em really benefited from the interactive playing with her mum and dad.

I went to bed feeling we'd really made a breakthrough.

When I picked her up from Helen's tonight, however, the day's events told a more sobering story.

Emily's begun putting her hands down her nappy and walking around with her trousers down by her ankles. Normally this isn't too much cause for alarm, and at least she stays in one place as she's pretty much hog-tied by the clothing around her legs.

Today, however, she had done some business and having removed her hands from her nappy, they were covered in business as well. I can imagine Helen's reaction seeing Emily walking around with hands smeared with poo and I really felt embarrassed to have such an "out of control" child.

All that progress I thought we were making, all the diligence to advance Emily's learning, and she doesn't something like this. If I didn't know any better I'd think she doesn't give a crap... to anyone but Helen.

Emily's ongoing speech issues

It's no secret that Sue is scared stiff about Emily's speech and lack of progression in said area (I'm taking more of a wait and see attitude, but am getting quietly worried).

While all her friends are able to string words together to make childish sentences, and to point to things they want, Emily does very little. We get the hand pushing something away when she's not interested and the odd word that has to be coaxed out of her.

I found a website called Speech Quest that aims to help people in our situation. After a questionnaire and assessment of a child you're then given activities to coax the inner linguistic genius out of your child. While there's a cost involved, I'm quite eager to do what I can to give Emily a leg up in life (btw, I found a voucher code for 20% off - BVT1015 - valid until end of March).

It's got to the point now that it's not only verbal communication that may be of issue, it's also her physical ability to communicate as I mentioned she only seems to push away things she doesn't want, as opposed to pointing to stuff she does.

Links: Speech Quest

Emily's reactions to Olympic goals

We watched the Canada vs USA gold medal hockey game tonight on telly.

I thought it would be nice for Emily to stay up so she could say in years to come she witnessed Canada getting gold on home ice.

Traditionally, Emily's broken out into crying when subjected to loud noises - bangs, yelling, etc. As Canada fought their way to victory, we had to temper each goal celebration with a hasty "yay Emily and get her involved." Of course, when the USA retaliated, the only voice in the room was Emily going a touch hysterical.

It's hard being a parent.

When the game ended in a draw after regulation time (around 10.15p), it was decided Emily needed to go to bed. Not only did we teach her to celebrate goals, we also kept her up WAY past her bedtime.

It's hard being a GOOD parent.

Gurning toddler

Emily seems to be growing up almost daily on this trip. She seems bigger, older, wiser, more astute and aware of her surrounding. It's quite odd watching a child go through these "growth spurts".

Her latest initiative is to gurn at people. She has a mild underbite, so scrunching her nose up just completes the face. I can't help shake the mental images of those old gurning toothless drunks whenever she does it. Of course, I don't know exactly WHY she's doing it, but I imagine it's all part of her mental and physical growth.

Be interesting to see if this is a phase or if Sue and I will have to traipse around the country in a few years as Emily competes in gurning competitions.

Growings up to do.

Emily and I went to visit the Feakins twins yesterday, as their dad Paul is also off on Thursday. It was a nice dads / babies afternoon. However, whenever you're with other children of a similar age to your own, you always end up comparing "feats".

For instance, when it comes to eating, Emily will attempt to cram everything in her hand into her mouth. She hasn't grasped the concept of ripping toast, etc. with her teeth and having a second bite. The twins however, were sitting quite nicely with a WHOLE rice cracker in one hand a sippy cup in t'other. Emily will drink from the sippy cup if you hold it to her mouth. Although, today was the first time (I've seen) that she took the cup, held it herself and drank while I just sat and watched.

Paul was also telling me - and I got to see - the twins feed themselves WITH SPOONS! Emily's able to self-wean to a degree, but again she crams in her mouth, etc. and if we give her a spoon ... well, we don't anymore. Put it that way.

Having reported these marvels to Sue, I was told we need to train Emily better. The self-weaning is coming along, as is the teethbrushing (we do it, but at least she lets us). We just have to be as vigilant with drinking, and biting off food, and holding spoons as we are with trying to get her to stand, crawl and wave buh-bye.

First full day at home

Emily woke us up this morning, some time around 6am. Wonderful, start as you mean to go on, kid.

Got a nap around 9 and woke up when the community mid-wife showed up around 10. Also received a really nice and unexpected bunch of flowers, balloon and stuffed Gund teddy bear from my colleagues at work, so that was quite nice.

Apart from that action, today has been spent pleasing Emily. It seems that when she's awake she's hungry and then there's the sleep state. We figured out this afternoon while changing her that we need to introduce stimulation into her life - something besides mum and dad on the bed and mum's boob lunging for her face. We have a nice Disney mobile situated near the change table that was a gift from Canada-ways. Having that on while changing Em really pre-occupied her, which was good.

Later this evening, we decided to try the dummy / soother in her mouth when she makes the sucky-sucky motion and see if that works, and hopefully give mum's nip-nips a break. She enjoyed it apart from spitting it out every few seconds by accident. I ended up singing nonsense to her as well so she could hear some soothing tones and hopefully go to sleep. After MANY false starts she's finally nodded off, with mum beside her.

I know Sue's done the sleep deprivation gig for a few days longer, but this sucks. I'm exhausted, irritable and have had a lingering headache all day. This, dear reader, is only the beginning! OUCH