The Dinosaurs are coming!

My son has a new fascination with dinosaurs.  He even asked me recently where they were.   I told him they were “all gone”, but he wanted to know why.  Gulp.  I am not ready to discuss extinction with a three-year-old!

He resumed our conversation this morning.  Out of the blue he announced, “I want dinosaurs to come in my backyard.”

“Really!?” I asked. “How many dinosaurs? Do you think they will all fit in our yard?”

“Maybe just 1.  That’s not too big.  But they don’t want to see me in this (pointing to pajamas),  I need to put on cyothes.” 

“Your plan doesn’t cover that…”

Anybody else tearing their hair out trying to get insurance to pay for treatment of their child’s developmental delays?  What an incredibly frustrating and CONFUSING process!!!  If I hear one more time, “Your plan doesn’t cover that,”  I am going to SCREAM.  

“Charlie bit me!”

I showed this to my children on YouTube.  Now they want to watch it over.  And over.  And over…  they love it when Charlie laughs.  They cackle EVERY TIME.

Have you seen my shoe?

I should have known better.  I NEVER pack only one pair of shoes when I travel.  EVER.  And yet this past weekend I did just that.  It was my fourth road-trip in a month’s time and I was tired of packing, so I thought, OH, I will just bring my Teva flip-flops, they are versatile enough. 

And then, in a strange kind of foreshadowing, I thought, “But what if something happens to one of my shoes?  Then I will be shoe-less!”  But I chose to ignore my inner voice and stick with just the Tevas.  After all, I had NEVER ever lost a shoe.

I should have listened to myself.

“internet love song”

I found this clip on YouTube, it’s too cute and the guy is actually quite talented.  His lyrics are quite  tongue-in-cheek and crack me up, yet somehow seem to hold some truth.  Here’s an excerpt (you can read the rest at www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gSJpeZslqo)…

Please don’t block me,
Please don’t go offline.
I wanna be with you
all the time.

BRB, OMG, LOL.
ROFLMAO.
BRB, OMG, LOL
ROFLMAO.

Here’s his MySpace page.  Gotta love a guy with a ukulele.  Anybody else think he looks like Rupert Grint from Happy Potter?  Maybe that is why I like him so much…

Shocking…

“Ignored Woman Dies on Hospital Floor”.   This article  REALLY got me going.  Another one of my hot button “issues” is the stigma attached to mental illness and the way that people with psychiatric conditions are often made to feel ashamed, embarrassed, and even frightened of revealing their condition to others.  They have faced dehumanizing treatment and misunderstanding from the media and society.  There is also often sub-par, even inhumane, conditions in some psychiatric care facilities.  

The callous disregard for human suffering that was described in this article from cnn.com made me feel horrified, sad, disgusted, and incredibly angry.  The poor woman had been waiting for TWENTY FOUR HOURS for a bed in a New York psychiatric hospital when she finally collapsed on the floor, convulsing and then lying completely still.  What did the staff do?  NOTHING.  For a full HOUR.  Finally someone walked over and NUDGED HER WITH THEIR FOOT, only to discover she was dead.  What did the staff do THEN?  Try to cover it up.  But the surveillance video tells it all.

I have not watched the video.  I will not watch the video.  But I WILL say, something has got to change.    

Day 3 ROCKED!

 

 

 

 

 

Gus had a very good day today at Vacation Bible School.  My goopy eye and me, not so much.  Well, it was overall a good day but we had a rough start.  I woke up exhausted and waaaay too early because my oldest decided to get up at 5:30am.  And then there was that pesky goopy eye issue, although I was VERY good about not touching my eye and spreading infection to other people.  But EVERYONE felt the need to comment on it.  “Why is your eye red?”  “Wow, your eye is really red!”  “Did you know your eye was red?”   I felt like shouting, “UNCLEAN! UNCLEAN!” wherever I went.

Day 2 with Gus

So Wednesday of VBS began, Day 3 for me, Day 2 for Gus.  As excited as everyone still is I can begin to see that we are all tiring a bit.  I started the day wondering if I had handled Gus’s first day as well as I could have.  It is really important to me to be sensitive to him and make sure he has fun and feels comfortable, but did I coddle him TOO much?  I had made sure most of the activity leaders were aware of his situation and did other things to help smooth out his day- could he tell that I was treating him differently than the other children?  Did that bother him?  I had been shamed the day before when at pickup I had started to talk to Gus’s mother about his day with him standing there.  I said, “He had a pretty good day”, and she said, “Honey, go wait for me over there.”  She wanted him to NOT feel different or like we were talking about him as if he was a non-person.  I respected that.  After all, he is not the Autistic Boy.  He is a boy who also has Autism.  Was I focusing too much on the Autism and not the boy?

VBS/ Inclusion In a Church Setting

I am smack dab in the middle of a week of Vacation Bible School at my church.  Quite a circus, 500-plus kids, loads of volunteers.  And in a setting like this it can often be a challenge to provide inclusion for children with special needs. 

I have two preschool-age boys who have some Sensory Integration issues, and one of them seems to be on the Autism Spectrum (he receives therapy and we are in the process of getting him evaluated).  I was worried how they would cope with all the activity and new experiences.  Thankfully they have done quite well.  I was able to have a long talk ahead of time with Percy’s teacher and fill her in on some of his unique characteristics: what his sign-language motions are, what to do when he bangs his head, when he eats things that are are not food, when his hits himself, when he hits someone else, etc.  But aside from brief kicking tantrums at dropoff the first 2 days he has been wonderfully frustration-free!  Thomas has also done well and didn’t even find the videos scary (I had been worried, they were about a mad scientist in a secret lab… it really does tie in to God somehow).  He has not eaten the snack yet due to his sensitivity to certain textures but he also has not complained.  I talked with his teacher and we agreed to NOT offer him an alternative.  Either he eats the snack he is given or he waits to eat at HOME.  Maybe by the end of the week he will be ready to try something new.  I will say though that after today’s session they were both quite crabby.  I think everyone is getting a little overstimulated, including ME!

I am teaching a team of eleven 2nd and 3rd graders, and semi-assisting with the three other teams the same age.  All together we have about 40 in our group.  They switched me at the last minute to that age because there was a child with EXTREME food allergies to almost EVERYTHING.  They knew I am all too familiar with how to use an EPI-Pen.  I have one because my son is frighteningly allergic to animals.  He turns into ONE.BIG.HIVE.  Scary.  I am also very used to food allergies because my nephew dealt with that for years and I had to watch what I gave him.   Anyway, the mother called me the night before Day 1 to fill me in.  I thought that was very responsible of her.  Her son brings his own snack every day to VBS.  It has to be frightening for a mother to send her child out of her hands into a setting full of volunteers where he can potentially be exposed to something that can harm him. 

That switch from 4th to 2nd must have been divine intervention, because it put me in place to have a huge blessing on day two when I was introduced to a new boy I’ll call Gus.  I was told he had Autism (albeit high-functioning) and they put him in my group thinking I would be the most sensitive.

More Sunday Comics

Time again for a post that is just for fun and foolishness!  Um, except for the few occasional moments of contemplation and melancholy.  Here are the search engine terms that were especially unusual the past two weeks…

By the way, we just got back from our third road trip in 10 days and then we have Vacation Bible School all this week.  I may not be online much.  If you are the praying type I would appreciate your prayers:  Percy was incredibly difficult this afternoon from all the activity and changes (he hurt me badly with a kick in the ribs) and I am not sure how he will do at VBS ALL WEEK… although at least they have a routine!