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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!
Help! My brain is falling out.
Tomorrow is the day… the day my life gets a million times more difficult for the next 9 months or so. Hey, I can exaggerate if I want to–I’m crazy. And you know what? I haven’t even told you about some of the twice exceptional issues Daughter #2 has, or the issues that I still need to get figured out for her, the evaluations I need to schedule. And I haven’t mentioned yet that she will have a teacher this year who gives lots of homework, so that’ll just be extra fun. All that gives us something to look forward to, now doesn’t it?
We had to go up to the store tonight and get school supplies for Daughter #2, (you know… Zoolander, as she wants to be called) because I am perhaps the lamest mother of them all. There were no other last-minute school supply shoppers–just me, Lame Mom.
Maybe that’s because I was too busy driving to work today and having my radiator bite it. Luckily, I noticed the water coming out from under the hood while I was driving 75MPH and managed to drive to an auto repair place before the engine overheated. The nice people agreed to drive me to work, fix my cracked radiator and take my money. Sweet. This is all my husband’s fault. Anything and everything that happens while he’s out of town I blame on him.
Anyway, talked to Dr. Med Lady, Lily’s psychiatrist tonight. Lily is still lethargic, sleepy and complaining of headache and stomachache. Dr. Med Lady thinks that Lily seems to be super-sensitive to any medication. (Ha… super-sensitive. No kidding. What is she not super-sensitive to?) Dr. Med Lady thinks that the Intuniv dose is too high for Lily, but this long-acting pill doesn’t come in a smaller dose. The only other choice is to try the short-acting lower dose, but it may wear off after lunch. We’re gonna go med free tomorrow and then get the new prescription refilled over the weekend. I like Dr. Med Lady.
At the store tonight, on our way through the girls’ department, Lily spotted a black zip-up hoodie that had super-soft fleece inside. She loved it and kept saying how soft and cozy it would be, so I bought it for her. She does like to bundle up to help filter outside stimulation. Before she discovered hat-wearing, she always wore a hoodie. I didn’t get it until she told me that it muffled sounds and blocked the lights at school. Now she almost always wears a hat, sometimes even in summer.
Lily has very specific qualities she looks for in a hat. It must cover her ears to help block sounds. It must have a brim to block light. Oh, and it must be cute. These actually aren’t easy requirements to fulfill. So I’m always on the lookout for the right kind of hats.
In the car on the way home, Lily and I practiced what she would say if a teacher or student questioned her about wearing a hat in school, which is against the rules.
Teacher: You there, take off the hat!
Lily: It’s in my IEP. (that seemed like the simplest response to teach her)
Obnoxious Student: Why are you wearing a hat? Hats aren’t allowed.
Lily: It keeps my brain from falling out.
Brainhugger 