The Importance of Friendship

 Our sweet Hannah Charlesetta turned 10 last month!  

An amazing milestone for my precious one, who without the opportunity of adoption would have become another African statistic.  Did you know her birth country is ranked in the top 5 for infant mortality?  One in 15 children never reach their 5th birthday.  Hannah most likely would have been one of them.

 

 Through God's wonderful mercy, our treasure came home very ill and malnourished at 2 3/4 weighing a mere 21 pounds with little energy but lots of determination.

 As many know our Hannah "Belle", as we call her, suffers from a variety of developmental delays due to her rough start.  Did we know when we adopted her?  No, but it has no bearing on the fact that God wonderfully chose her for us!!!  We have learned so much about ourselves and the grace and mercy of God through the blessing of parenting a child with developmental challenges.  I am so thankful we did not miss  it!

 Up to this point in Hannah's life she has seemed fairly content with not having lots of friends.  She has always preferred playing alone, or in one on one situations, or with younger children.  Her speech delays have made groups intimidating so she stayed on the edges of them.

 Well this year before her birthday as we were talking about what to do, instead of naming all the kids she wanted to come, she started naming all the kids who don't talk to her.  I was shocked and in such pain for my precious treasure.  Her innocence is lost.  She knows she is different.  It hurts.  We cried. Talked.  Comforted. 

 And made special plans with her best friend, Bethany.  I call her "Hannah's special gift"  the friend who accepts and loves Hannah for who she is.

 A few days before her birthday Hannah had her first ever breakdown with anger.  If you know Hannah, you know anger is not a part of who she is.  But we have seen it a couple of times now.  As we work through the anger it is stemming from not being accepted.  She feels alone.  It breaks a mom's heart.

 We are working diligently with her speech therapist is social communication right now and she is making great progress.  We are also working with some things from the therapist and from big sister Erinn on understanding our  feelings and finding proper outlet, and not letting it build up.  She is doing great and I am so thankful for all the amazing resources to help our little one find her voice. 

The fear of rejection for her is still a very big thing, so her steps can be tentative or on the other side awkward.  We are praying for some little hearts that are willing to hear her call for friendship.  For growth on her parts.  And for wisdom for this Mama who wants to help her little treasure blossom into all God is calling her to be.  Thank you God for my Precious Hannah, my gift from You!

Concepts in Pictures and Color

I have so enjoyed all I am learning this year in helping teach my youngest treasures, whom have learning challenges!

Interestingly both Hannah and Caleb have been diagnosed with Auditory Processing Disorder, but both of them display it in totally different fashion.

Caleb struggles with hearing and discriminating sounds, so  he really struggles with spelling and hearing the words he is reading.

Hannah struggles with storing and reproducing sounds in the proper order.

Caleb has an amazing memory when it is in story or sentence form, but struggles with memorization of math facts and processes, grammar rules, and sequenced things like months or books of the Bible.

So he can memorize verses and speeches to amaze people, but still can not tell you the months of the year every time.

Hannah on the other hand has always struggled with memorizing of any sort.

In fact we were recommended not to try to have her memorize for quite a while.

This last year she memorized the whole 23rd Psalm and we were so very proud of her.

We used lots of hand motions and changed some words to help her.

And example would be, "in the presence of my enemies".

She was really struggling with this line till I figured out it was the word "presence" that was throwing her off.

Her idea of this was "presents", and it was not going to change from the concrete form of 'presents' to the non-concrete form of 'presence'.

So we changed it to "in front of my enemies", and off she went.

As she memorized, she slowly stopped the hand motions, but when she got stuck all I had to do was put my hands in the right place and it would clue in her memory.

All this to preface the above picture-

 I did not want to cram verses into little minds with no understanding.

So with some help from teaching from Dianne Craft I came up with the above picture for Hannah.

With lots of color and pictures she was able to learn the verse and know its meaning at the same time.

I have also learned, at least at this point, we will only work on one verse a week with her.

She needs the constant reinforcement and when I try to add in a second verse for her Awana she mixes up the two and intertwines them and their meanings.

So I will be praising God for each verse and picture she memorizes at her own special pace---

Just the way God made her!

"FELEPHLANT"

Hannah and I had a great time at her speech this week. She always has fun with Ms. Jennifer and I was able to get lots of clarification on some issues we are dealing with!!

We have been really struggling with some vocabulary issues. Mostly her not being able to remember the names of things or when we ask for things she does not know what we are talking about. I was thinking--you've been here for 4 1/2 years and you are 7 years old you know what ketchup is!!

Well as it has been explained to me--Hannah does not store those words in her brain properly---they are mixed up--so when she goes to pull them out to use them she can't get the sounds in the proper order--she then freezes (her stress response) because she knows it is wrong, but really has no idea how to fix it! Interesting!!

So we were encouraged to continue to prompt her with beginning sounds or give her the word. If I have asked her for something and she can't put what she is hearing with what she needs to get, we should try to describe it and move her towards it.

We have worked on pacing words using her knuckles--sometimes she goes so fast--and she does not pronounce every sound--that it becomes hard to understand her. So she makes a fist and points to a knuckle for each syllable. It slows her down and paces her words so she focuses more on making each sound.

We are now using this to help with words that are getting twisted up coming out. An example would be "elephant"--she would come up with something like 'felephlant'. You see the sound are out of order. So when she uses her knuckles and says el-e-ph-ant she gets her sound in the proper order with a visual and kinetic boost (her learning styles), then she can put her hand down and say it correctly!!!

Hannah's therapist enjoys working with Hannah, but does admit that there are so many levels that we are working with that sometimes it is hard to say why things are happening or if they are permanent or if there is only one thing affecting what we are working on. An example would be in the above scenario--is it all auditory processing, or is there some motor planning (how to make the sound), or is there some learning delay (due to her malnutrition)!! It is a multi-layered beast at this point, but I am very thankful for all the help we have found to help us walk this path.

We are hoping that when we start up again after the weddings, to do an official test for auditory processing on Hannah. Though she is sure she has it, it will help her to know where we are heading. And help us get other services if we choose to down the road. It will also help me in writing up her Privately Developed Plan (PDP)--this is like an IEP that schools do. Her PDP will allow me as a homeschool teacher to set her own academic goals, rather than trying to reach a set standard.

Got It Moment!

We had one of those, "Oh, I get it" moments today!!

You know when the kids realize that their words or behavior has an immediate reward!

So we are sitting in speech therapy and Hannah has always gotten 'speech bucks' for saying things correctly, but she has never put the action of receiving the 'speech buck' together with her correct speech....

So today at the end of a long lesson on saying the 'R' sound, her last word is 'raisins', which is difficult with both the 'r' sound and the final 's' sound.

So Ms. Jennifer puts a speech buck on the pile and Hannah again says 'raisins'....watching the pile....Ms. Jennifer adds one....again the 'raisins'....watching the pile....seriously about 10 times....as her smile grows and grows!!!!

Connection made!!!!

I really wonder what next class will bring or if she will even remember!!!! But it was so fun to watch her 'get it' today!!!

And, no, the gift was not for speech class, but a gift from her cousins in Texas for her birthday. It is also a great gift for her learning if you do 'x' what will happen, so try something else to get the fish!!!