Finished Matilda

Lotte finished Roald Dahl's "Matilda"..

Like her brother and sister before her, she was hooked on it...

Up to the next one....
  

How is she really doing?

The question of every parent of course.. but perhaps even more for the parent of a child that was born deaf, started hearing later in life and is now catching up..
Actually.... is Lotte really catching up..??

Homework always seems, or feels, a sort of reference for what Lotte should be able to do. There's a feeling that when a she has a problem with her homework it means that she's behind.
However.. we need to step back, think back to the last meeting we had with the school and remember that she's at above average level.
She's doing fine compared to the rest of the class.. perhaps she would be at a higher level had she not been born deaf, but that is totally irrelevant. She is exactly where she should be.. She doesn't need to be able to know everything..

With this school year there's a change in education. Like Lotte's mother said:

It's no longer "Learning to read.".. it's "Reading to learn."   !!

And that is a difficult transition. We are aware that she reads words, sentences, but she's not thinking about what she reads.. At school they work on that, learning to read & understand the title, look & understand the pictures, think about it, start reading, make metal maps etc.. But its a lot to process...

Many unknown concepts..
Like "They thought the earth was the center of the orbit of the sun."
Who is "they"..? - What is "center"? - What is "orbit"? One sentence read without problems, but not understood...

BUT... is she supposed to understand.? How many other children have problems with the same concepts?
That's something we need to keep in our mind..... we only see Lotte.... we should look at the level of other children as well.. The problems she has might be a general problem at that age in that class...

It's important for us to realise this as the last thing we want to do is push Lotte too much and making her feel as if she is failing, and thereby losing her interest in school and homework.
Because.. we are lucky with that.
Lotte loves to go to school, likes doing homework, likes reading...
A little bit of frustration at times of course but also the joy of overcoming difficulties and succeeding in difficult tasks.. You cannot have the one without the other..

So.. again we will prepare homework in the weekend, structure better when we are going to do what homework. Have the homework done before she starts visiting friends..
All promises we made before, but that dilute in the daily life where parents are sometimes not home when she is done with school.
Parents that let her play with friends instead of insisting that she comes home first, that have to choose between social activities in the street vs academic activities..
Parents that look back in history to see where Lotte comes from and are looking into the future where Lotte is headed.. Trying not to look where she is NOW.
Parents that know that it will be all right in the long run..
Parents that realise that ...

Lotte is exactly where she should be..

Milestones, Mountain-ranges and views

Milestones....
They happen all the time, and like I have said on the blog.. sometimes they fly by, and sometimes they stand up in your face... (well, I said something to that effect..)

Last Thursday was the yearly checkup for Lotte. A great day out since we (actually, this was the first time I couldn't be there..) have to fly to Oslo, then take a train & tram to the hospital where the center for the check-up is located. One of Lotte's teachers joined Lotte and her mum.

This time, for the first time, it was Lotte who was in charge. She has grown so much lately, that my wife had no problem just sitting back and let Lotte do all the talking. And the specialists were excellent at directing everything to Lotte.
It must have been a wonderful day for Lotte because she was 100% focused the hole time. While adjusting the settings on the CI/BTE's, when finding the noises that she doesn't like (flushing the toilet) and trying to do something with that, she got it, and gave excellent feedback.. While doing speech tests in noisy environments and while doing comprehension tests. she did great. Her teacher was very impressed with Lotte..
But it's a great day out. She loves to go there and thrives on the attention, but this time, at the same time she realises the importance of the day.

In all, this day marks a beginning of Lotte taking over the "CI business" from us. She can accurately give feedback about how and what she hears. She understands the tests they are doing. She understands that there are different programs on her BTE she can use, because she was mentally there when they made them.
Of course life goes back to normal for her as soon as she was back at school, and she won't be playing with the different proframs, but she knows they are there.
Also, with one of her teachers being there, there is someone at school that will recognise difficult situations and can tell Lotte to switch to another program.. or, she might identify that Lotte forgot to switch back to the default setting.

Anyway.. It's a huge milestone. It didn't fly by. We didn't bump into it. It was like the mountain range in the distance that we finally reached.. We knew it was there, and were cruising along towards it. Now, having reached it, we can enjoy the view forward, and back...
It's a great view...

(btw.. Lotes mom promised to post an account of the day as well.... so stay tuned..)

Drawings and numbers..

Parents will identify with this...
It looks as if nothing happens, and suddenly you notice the change. Actually, you don't notice the change. You remember suddenly that something is completely changed since a while ago.
When it happened, how..... you have no clue when it happened, but it's there..

We noticed it with drawings. Suddenly the pictures she made had changed. She even started copying drawings. She chose a DVD of "Mamma Mia" and started drawing the arch and the person underneath it. Amazing. New!!
But other pictures have evolved as well. More structure, copying, or redrawing the same figures.

And numbers are the thing now. She knows them, counts happily to 100, and at school they are counting money. Adding a bit, changing 10 into smaller pieces like 5's and 1's.
Then then we thought to make her remember our telephone number. 8 digits...
Actually, the cellphone of Mouse. Estimated time to make her remember, 3 days....
So, we wrote down the number.... she dialled.. well, pressed the keys, and "bliss" the mobile phone rang.. Magic.
DId it again.. Fun game. And another time.. Lotte liked
Actual time to remember it... 5 minutes.... She's good!! All this was before she went to school.... She still remembered it when she came home from school.. Photografic memory?
Next day the home number was established... We'll leave it at that for now..

All in all it demonstrates again the importance of Lotte going to school. Even though she is still behind in some social things, the learning at school is helping her with catching up.

Beer en Egel...

Lotte and I (Lottes mum) were reading the touching story of Bear and Hedgehog, where Bear wants to water the little flowers outside his cave, because they're thirsty. However, he doesn't have anything but a bucket with a hole in it, to carry the water in. Hedgehog has the answers to this problem: Bear has to repair the hole with hay. But one needs scissors in order to cut the hay in the right length. Bear's scissors need sharpening. Hedgehog suggests they need a stone for that. After a long search, they find a stone, but they need water as well for sharpening the scissors. "How do I get that?", asks Bear. "In the bucket, of course", says Hedgehog.
Lotte and I had read the story once before, a few weeks earlier. From time to time it might be difficult to get an idea about how much she really understands of a story. Well, our story continues like this....

Bear and Hedgehog's story ends with Bear thanking his little friend for being such a good help (even though they have accomplished virtually nothing), and Bear hands him som flowers to put in to a vase. Bear asks his friend whether he has something to put them in. I asked Lotte whether she knew the answer to that question, whereupon she says: "Yes, Hedgehog has a bucket himself!!!!"
She remembered, and what's more, Lotte had understood the humour in the plot.
Our little rascal never stops surprising us; these are small everyday gifts that we appreciate enormously!

Reading with Lotte.

One of the most important things to do with children is to read to them.
It will give them a feeling for words, for rhytm, rhyme, pronounciation etc. There's a direct link between the amount of reading a child gets (read to or reading themselves) and the performance at school.

Today Lotte's mum was reading from the "Mijn eerste Van Dale", a book with rhymes for little children, going through the whole ABC...
Lotte loves to do this. Loves to learn new words.

The book is obviously for all 3 children, but for the others we also bought the "Junior Spreekwoordenboek" a dictionairy with uhh. (cannot recall the english word.....) proverbs. (Thanks to this website)
It's great for them. Stimulates them to read, search for info elsewhere than on the internet.
They love it and read with grandma (who's staying with us), learning all kinds of new proverbs.


In addition... (the ease of the internet allows you to click on yet another item to buy) we bought the "Van Dale Praktijkgids voor Spelling". Not living in Holland, we have to make sure the kids can write proper Dutch.