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Long Time-No Post
I knew this would happen. Events, evaluations and emails about my twice exceptional daughters fly back and forth so fast between me and both schools that I can barely keep up, let alone blog about them.
Just getting Lily clothed and fed is a major undertaking, never mind helping her keep up with school. But school seems to be going well lately. More on that later.
When I told her tonight that I want to start writing the Brainhugger Blog again, she said, “Why, because I make interesting fusses about things that you want to tell people about?” Well, yes.
Shower Power
I’m sitting here at the computer and keep hearing an alarm going off. I can’t figure out what that beeping noise is. Lily opens the bathroom door, damp, wrapped in a towel, carrying her alarm clock. She turns it off. I ask her why the alarm was beeping. She tells me breezily that she set an alarm for herself, so she’d know to get out of the shower in 20 minutes. She skips her naked, skinny self out of the room. It takes me a second to absorb what she just said. I replay it a couple of times in my head.
Only certain people will know why that little scene is completely amazing. I didn’t have to remind my twice exceptional ADHD daughter that it was time to get in the shower–7 times. I didn’t have to make my voice sound sharp the 7th time in order to spur her into action. I didn’t have to poke my head in the bathroom door and tell her that it was time to get out–3 times and 45 minutes later. I didn’t have to finally go in the bathroom, push the shower curtain aside and find her squatting on the shower floor, captivated by how the water runs down the drain. I didn’t have to remind her again that she needs to get out, so she’s startled out of her zen world of water rivulets and insists that she WAS getting out.
No, she brought her alarm clock down to the bathroom, set her alarm, got in the shower, washed herself, got out of the shower and dried off, before her alarm went off—all on her own.
How did that just happen? Did her frontal lobe just suddenly have a growth spurt. I have this strange feeling, like this weird recognition of a foreign world.
When you live with a kid like this, sometimes you don’t realize how much different daily life is. You just know that it’s hard. What? You mean, other parents don’t have to tell their kids the exact steps required for a task 20 times and then follow up to make sure that they’re actually starting the steps, continuing the steps and completing the steps?
As far as the magical shower alarm incident goes, my mind wonders if that’s how ‘normal’ kids act. Is that how much easier things are for the parents of ‘normal’ kids? Wow, it feels so light and airy and effortless. She has the idea that she should take a shower, she plans the steps and completes the steps, ALL BY HERSELF? I want some more of that. I’m still replaying it in my mind and I’m amazed by the ease of it. I don’t want to let it go, I guess because I know that moments like that are, right now at least, a special treat.
Fostering a souffle in your home.
Our local GT association and the school district’s ‘Department of Diverse Learners’ are sponsoring a GT seminar tomorrow night. The topic is ‘Fostering Autonomous Learners in Your Home.’ I won’t be attending. I’ll be too busy fostering autonomous learners in my home. Seriously, the kind of GT/twice exceptional learners I have, I don’t have time to attend seminars. I’m too busy helping them with their homework every night.
I’m not saying this seminar is an example of this, but I usually feel like most seminars, classes, workshops, etc don’t offer me much useful, day to day, in the trenches information. They all seem to be about 2E theory. I need practical, concrete steps on how to help my twice exceptional kids with daily living skills and school work.
Here’s a story that Lily and wrote together… the first chapter of her “Me” book at school.
Lily Souffle
I love cooking. I spend long hours in the kitchen making up my own recipes. Most of them are pretty good. I love mixing flavors to make something new. If there was one recipe that probably best describes me it would be a soufflé.
A soufflé is a light and fluffy baked cake that can be made savory or sweet. It’s a complicated dish that is difficult for even a French chef to master. Like me, a soufflé is not a simple recipe to create.
A soufflé is sophisticated and delicate. It’s hard to keep puffy outside the oven because even just a loud noise can deflate a soufflé. Sometimes I feel like I’m the same way. I can be sensitive to my surroundings, and I can be easily spazzed out by loud noises. But, if all the conditions are right, I can rise high.
A soufflé is a unique dish, devoured by young and old. I’m not saying that I’m devoured by young and old, but I do think that I’m definitely out-of-the ordinary. My ideas are marvelously strange.
Even though making a soufflé can be a bit of trouble, the delicious results are well-worth it. Eating a soufflé is quite an experience. It’s a fun dessert that can make people happy, JUST LIKE ME!
REMEMBERING TO REMEMBER
I almost cried this morning before I walked into work, all because I forgot my security badge.
I remembered so very many things this morning, but not my badge, which I would need to get into my office building. Now I would have to walk all the way around to the front door, carrying the flower I remembered to stop and buy for a friend who needed cheering up and the lunch that I remembered to pack for myself this morning because our team was scheduled for a lunch mtg with the company partners.
Oh, and there was the cat poop scooper and cat toys I remembered to stop at the store and buy this morning for Zoolander’s Animal Shelter social studies project and there were the lunches and snacks and water I remembered to pack for my twice exceptional girls. (Although, Lily forgot and left the snacks & water in the car.)
There were the spelling words I remembered to tell Zoolander to bring to the car this morning, so I could quiz her on the way to drop her sister off and the package I remembered to stop and pick up at the post office after we dropped her sister off. There was the math app, PopMath, I remembered to download so Zoolander can practice her math facts on my phone. Then, there was the text that I remembered to write for the High School Helper I just hired, telling her the plan for the afternoon. And there was the email I sent to the ADHD coach, giving her a heads up about what Lily might need to discuss with her at their appointment after school… gas for my car, trash out to the curb, pick up CSA veggies….
But wait, there’s much, much more… but I won’t go into that. It’s just a long list of things to remember when you’re functioning as the frontal lobe for 3 people, while your husband is on an island cruise… working. No, really. He worked on a cruise ship last week. I know. I hate him too. Oh, wait… no, this the week he was working at Crater Lake Nat’l Park in Oregon.
So, when I sat in the office parking lot this morning, gathering up all the things I remembered and discovering that I forgot my badge, my eyes stung and I remembered that I wish I had someone to remember things for ME.
Brainhugger 