Friday 10 November 2006

Lotte's own will.....

Having a bright young lady in the family (2 actually) that knows what she wants and is not afraid to demand it is wonderful.... It is helping her tremendously now and she will have great benefit of it later in life....

But obviously it has it's downsides.
She has a very good idea about what she wants to wear. And most of the times it is something not chosen by her mother. (allmost by default ?)
We allready made the concession that when clean clothes are to be chosen, she can pick from two sets. This will give her enough feeling that it is her choice that she will agree.
However, yesterday she was told to wear the same clothes today (poor child... ). However, she managed to dive into the closet and find a clean pair of pants. Since this would be the first hurdle of the day - we chose to look the other way. And as expected, the second hurdle was no problem. This is "how to wear her hair".
When hurdle one (cloths) has finally been taken (this can take some time, unlike today) hurdle two grows proportionally.

Today... it went smoothly. (see picture above)

Her stubburness can have something to do with her intelligence. Even though she hears a lot, there must still be a lot of moments that she realises that she doesn't understand what's going on. She knows she's missing something.
Her way to handle this is to have very fixed ways of behaving and any deviation from this can cause a demand in returning to HER way of things.

An example was today in the pre-school. Marieke brought her and instead of leaving the normal way, she left via another door. (She had to go to the admin to talk with the leader of the school) For Lotte, this was totally "out of the normal" and she reacted strongly to that. Refusing to let her mother go.
After calming her down, leaving through the "correct" door, Marieke entered the school through another door.

But it indicates Lottes strong sense to have everything in order.

Obviously, there could be another reason than a "feeling of missing something". But if this is the case, what if she had been deaf without CI.
She would have had even more the feeling of missing something. She would be able to communicate fine with us - her parents - and her siblings. Also with the other children in the kindergarten that know sign.
But she would have missed out in communication with her grandparents, with our friends, and with her siblings when the three of them watch television or a DVD.
With more activities than now from which she would have the feeling she's missing out, would she have reacted in the same way. Would she have been earlier with these kind of responses? We will never know.

What we do know is that we have a deaf girl that has no problem explaining to strangers what happened today, what she ate, the drawings she made ect. (For the strangers, understanding might have been a challenge..)
This happened yesterday as well, on the school where her siblings go. There was a celebration and Lotte chatted with everyone willing to listen.. She enjoyed herself the whole evening..
Below, she's helping her brother and sister with making a collage. She just jumped in with all these other - elder - children and started working. Chatting away..
(AllDeaf)


2 comments:

Mom to Toes said...

Oh, my goodness, Cloggy… this brought tears to my eyes. You just described Erin almost to a T.

She becomes very upset when anything is out of order, or if there is the slightest change to her schedule. If I leave a cupboard door or drawer open, she closes it. If it is a door that is out of her reach, she points and insists on it being closed until someone closes it.

If I hand her a comb or brush in the morning to occupy her while I get ready for work, she is not happy until she can put it into the *correct* drawer in the bathroom vanity. She will try to physically push me aside to get to the drawer.

If the normal AM daycare teacher is on vacation and the Mid-AM teacher is there in her place, she becomes very upset.

It never occurred to me that her almost obsessive tendency for schedule and order could have anything to do with her deafness. And this behavior started over the last 4 months or so – when her peers at daycare begin communicating verbally with each other and she began missing out on things.

What an interesting similarity!

Cloggy said...

One reply on AllDeaf was..[i]
My 5 years old son is like that too, but he is hearing.[/i]
And of course, it happens with all children. Her deafness doesn't have to be the reason.
However, we have two older children that are not like that. Again, that means nothing, but it gives a good insite in how these little creatures operate :-)

We do feel that her compulsive search for order has something to do with "missing out on communication".

And that is OK. It's up to us to make sure that our children are included in our lives, and that they are not standing on the side.
We see Lotte's signals and react accordingly..

(Some) Milestones

  • 2013-08: Grade 6
  • 2012-08: Grade 5
  • 2011-08: Grade 4
  • 2011-03: BTE's on the ear
  • 2010-08: Grade 3
  • 2009-08: Grade 2
  • 2008-08: Mainstream School (6y. old)
  • 2006-10: All-hearing Kindergarten (4y. old)
  • 2004-11-22: CI activated (27 m. old)
  • 2004-10-04: Bi-lateral CI (26 m. old)
  • 2003-08: Deaf/HOH/CI Pre-school/"DEAF" Kindergarten (12m. old)
  • 2003-07: HA's fitted (11 m. old)
  • 2003-06: Diagnosed deaf. Start sign-language (10m. old)
  • 2002-11: Suspicion loss of hearing (4 m. old)
  • 2002-08: Born - A fierce LION
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