Good Days

Elise returned to school on Tuesday. She spent Monday playing with her sitter and really enjoyed herself. She was super happy all day. Hubby took her to school Tuesday morning. He said that when she walked in sight of the school building, she started jumping and laughing and running. At first he was worried she was going to start the whole strange laughing thing again, but then he realized she was just excited to be back to school. When she reached her classroom, she hugged one of her teachers, went back and hugged another, returned to the first for a hug and again to the other. She was extremely excited to be back and see them. I love that she is learning to share her joy with others.

On Wednesday, we had a conference to discuss where Elise is at, how she assessed and recommendations for continuing her success. Her regional center coordinator, her soon-to-be ABA providers, her head teacher, her care coordinator, the program social worker, the medical doctor, her OT therapist and her ST therapist were there. It was wonderful because for once I think that Elise is understood. Elise assesses very poorly but she does in fact know a lot more than she shows. Hubby and I have known this all along, but when everyone consistently assesses her so low (we agree that the assessments are correct, she just holds back), even we had started to have doubts. A consistent theme of discussion was how her performance could be inconsistent, she is often non-compliant & she is not showing everything that she can do. That and her lack of motivation and focus. Something holds her back from fully being herself. At home, we see the real Elise most of the time. No one seems to be able to identify why she is holding back. All acknowledge that she can be "slow to warm". This is definitely true, but 8 weeks is a bit long to take to open up to the people that are trying to help her. If I knew how to help her open up more quickly, I would do what I could. I personally think this is going to have to be something that she determines she wants to do. I see signs of that happening right now. A changed that way around 3 1/2. It's like around that time he decided to try more openly. I hope that Elise will do the same soon. I personally think her lack of motivation has much to do with being bored in her environment. I know I'm the mom and mom's always think too highly of their offspring, but I think she's scarily smart. It's all in there, but with the autism and her personality mixing, we haven't quite found the key to getting it out of her. Unfortunately, I really think we will only keep making these small, but significant, strides with her until she internally decides that she wants to join others and show them how she really is. When she makes that choice, she will soar. This is not just what I BELIEVE, this is what I KNOW. I only hope that this happens soon so that she doesn't fall so far behind developmentally that it'll be too difficult for her to catch up and hamper her confidence more than it already is.

Today was a good day. I dropped Elise off at school and had a meeting there. Hubby picked her up. He brought her sitter and B with him. They watched her in circle time and said that she did great. When they entered the room, hubby told B to give Elise a hug. The first time she didn't hug back, but when he told her to hug B, she actually put her arms around him.

On Tuesday night, Elise crawled into B's bed. She didn't want to go to her bed and B said that he wanted to sleep with her. I decided to let them try to see what would happen. She actually somewhat smiled when B laid down next to her. She started to fall asleep, but B called us back into the room 5 minutes later because he wanted more room. He wanted Elise to go back to her bed. We put her into her bed and she didn't fuss about it. It just seemed so strange to me that she really kind of wanted to sleep with him.

Also on Tuesday, I was cooking dinner while Elise and A were in the playroom. A was working on a large floor puzzle. Elise apparently picked up a piece and put it in the puzzle correctly. A was super excited and ran out to tell me that Elise was playing with him. I was skeptical, but went into the room to see. She was indeed doing the puzzle and tolerating A doing it at the same time. She was getting frustrated because it was difficult for her. I sat down and all 4 of us did the puzzle together. Elise allowed Adam to place his hand over hers and help her orient the puzzle piece and put it in the correct place. It was amazing to see her actually cooperatively playing with him. It truly only lasted about 3 minutes and she was getting frustrated periodically, but it was still a first.

The best thing is that she is really imitating hubby and I and initiating play with us. She has a princess book with puzzle pieces. She has been picking up the crown and other hat type pieces and putting it on her head and on our heads. There are food items and she pretends to eat them. Even better, she pretends to feed us. One piece is a lipstick. She gave it to me and I pretended to put it on my lips. I asked if she wanted to put some on also. She took and also pretended to put it on her lips. There is a comb and she spontaneously started combing my hair. As if that wasn't enough, she noticed that she had combed hair in front of my eyes. She brushed it out of my eyes for me. Maybe I'm reading too much in that action, but it seemed to me that she had an awareness that hair in my eyes would be bothersome to me. Could that actually have been a display of empathy? I can certainly be optimistic and hope, but that may be a bit too optimistic for right now.

Well, that's been this week so far. All I plan on doing right now is majorly encouraging the progress we're seeing at home. I'm hoping that if I help boost her confidence, in sincere ways, that she'll start extending some of these behaviors we're seeing at home, to her school and her therapy sessions. That way, the people with the best skill sets to teach her will be helping the real Elise with the exact things that she needs. I don't know if this makes sense, but it does in my head :0)

Good night all.