Learning by cleaning

So, one of the really great things about RDI is that it has made us very conscious of the many ways that we can involve Sami and Oliver in the everyday, mundane details of life. Over the years, I confess, it hasn't always been fun to involve the kids in the shopping and the cooking and the cleaning and all the other errands that pile up each week. But spending that time together, doing things together, modeling my thinking for the kids and helping them find many ways to participate in our lives together has ultimately been very rewarding. The real goal of working through all this stuff with my kids isn't about teaching them how to do the laundry or make a bed -- it's about executive functioning: what do you do when you are faced with something that isn't working out as we expect? How do you know when you've done something good enough? How do you plan? How do you evaluate and choose between two things that are similar? In RDI, this is what we call apprenticeship in thinking and now that the kids are getting older I can clearly see how it is benefiting both of them; each in their own way.

But the side benefit is, of course, that they were also learning to be independent. With Sami, I suppose he would have managed to pick all this up along the way, regardless of my efforts. But Oliver? He is eight and working independently is just not one of his strong suits -- to put it mildly. This weekend, however, I began to take note of just how far he has come in this, too. Shooing the kids into their room to clean up, I suggested that Oliver pick up the items on the floor and Sami make the bed. At first, Oliver kind of wandered around in a not very directed kind of way and I figured he probably needed some more help so I said: "How about if you start with the cars, Oliver." And then? I stood back and watched him put every car in the right spot. Then he moved onto the books and finally the random toys laying in a heap. Meanwhile, Sami made the bed and they finished up by working together to stack the giant cardboard blocks and then vacuuming. All without a word from me.

Now I know that two kids, five and eight, cleaning their room together might sound like no great shakes to some. But if you only knew how many times I wondered if I would have to stand forever beside my boy, telling him the next thing to do, then you would understand why a little piece of the dread I carry around with me when I think about what the future might hold for my boy evaporated.

And it helped that my house was spotless by the end of the day.

Echoing Oliver

I wish you could hear Oliver talk. I wish you could hear the way he manages to get it all out, but slowly and only with me asking him and then repeating each and every word as he says it. It is laborious. A process every time.

"Oliver," I say as he hands me his plate with half a sandwich still remaining, "is there something you want to say?"

"I. don't. want. to. eat. that. I'm. finished."

Or, when he gets up half-way through the video game he is playing with his brother and I call him back: "What's going on little man?" and he says: "I. don't. want. to. play. anymore."

At dinner when he hungrily looks up from his nearly empty plate there is: "I. want. to. have. some. more. noodles." And later: "I'm. full."

He can say it. The words are there, but he waits to hear my words echo back to him. If I don't he loses steam and trails off into nothing.

I encourage and cajole. Anything to get him to turn his thoughts from silence into words.

Yesterday when we were out raking leaves and despite the cold Oliver took off his sweater. In the spirit of letting him decide for himself I didn't interfere. Then, a half-hour later he picked up the sweater from where it had landed on the back deck and handed it to me saying (without the need for me to repeat it back to him): "I'm cold. I want to put my sweater on." Just like that; full of the glory of pronouns.

He's still mostly quiet and, like almost everyone else in the house, lost in the wake of the verbal typhoon that is Sami. He is pointing now, to everything, with ease and without prompts. We play the pointing game every time we go to get Sami from school and the words are there. "I see a big truck." "I see the sky." "I see a house." I wish someone could tell me what his language would look like in a year, five years or ten. But for now it feels like we're getting somewhere.

For now I let it be enough.

Why I'm glad my friends are so insightful

Recently a friend and former teacher came to visit just as I was putting away the homeschool lesson for the day. Oliver and I had been working hard on one-to-one correspondence for a number of weeks and still, he wasn't getting it. I was having a hard time not being frustrated, mindful that I can't teach effectively once I start in with the pessimism: "He's NEVER going to get it!" But still, after trying everything I could think of to get the concept across I felt myself heading in that direction. Dangerous territory for the whole family! I said as much to my friend and her reply startled me with its clarity. In essence she said: "Then put it away. If you are trying so hard and he isn't getting it then he isn't ready. Do something else for awhile and come back to it. He'll get it eventually but don't make yourself -- or him -- crazy." I think I really needed for someone to say this to me because taking the long view of things often gives us such needed perspective.

Her advice made a lot of sense to me and it is something that I practice regularly with Sami without even thinking about it. You know, with Sami it is pretty easy to trust in the developmental process. Not ready to potty train? Fine. Let's give it some time. Tying your shoes? Reading? Who cares! We'll try again in a couple of weeks. And really, it has been as easy -- as not worrisome -- as that.  With Oliver, however, trusting in the developmental process hasn't been so worry-free. But after years and years of mothering Oliver you would think that I might be just a tiny bit more relaxed about it. After all, I've seen astonishing growth in my boy. I've seen his plateaus followed by bursts of development over and over again. I spend a lot of time being amazed by him. He and Sami just have a different rhythm to their forward momentum.

So we abandoned our lessons for awhile. I still incorporated numbers and counting into everything we did but I didn't try to sit down with him and match numbers with quantities again. Until today. Today was Sami's first day of school and so I figured it might be a good time to break out the numbers and counters again. And do you know what? It was like he had been doing it all along. He still had trouble remembering some of the names of the numbers, thanks to his aphasia, but he very clearly matched them with quantities. And each time he counted out the right quantity he proudly turned to me and said: "You did it!"

"No," I reminded him: "YOU did it!"

A couple of nights ago I listened to a speaker who reminded the audience that we cannot "pour language into our kids." This has kind of stuck with me because I like the image and because it is so true for just about everything. I mean, as much as we might like to, we can't pour anything into our kids (and here I'm also thinking about Resident Teenager!). Language, development, learning, reason. ... these are things that our children have to come by naturally through the course of living. What we can do is support them (with the right environment and teachers and all that), pay attention to their own individual rhythms, create lots of learning opportunities, and find a way to trust in the process.

And sometimes, I remind myself, the process of living and learning can even stretch well into a person's fortieth year!

Happy Birthday, my little one.

It's late and I'm tired but I couldn't let this day go by without telling the world how much I love you, Oliver.  So even though you kept me up last night between 2:30 and 6am, I think I'll keep you.  But let's not make it a habit again, OK?  I have a feeling that eight is going to be an awesome year, we have a lot of adventures ahead of us, and I want to be well rested for it.