"School At Home"

20 March 2011

Time is always short and there is always more than needs to get done. Now that Maddi is at school for part of the day you would think that I would have time to get some personal things done. However, having her gone reminds me of having a child in Kindergarten. You just drop them off when you have to turn around and pick them up again.

There is curiosity about what we do at home. Before Maddi went back to school her day was divided into two parts, Academic/ Cognitive Activities and Functional Activities. Now that she is at school we have to include her school time and homework. I have to include appropriate breaks to allow her brain to rest.

When we first got home from the hospital we could focus on one thing for about 15 minutes without her getting fatigued. Now she does really well for about 30 minutes. That is great improvement!

Academic and Cognitive Activities

Puzzles

Writing

Math

Story Problems

Strategy Games

Processing Speed Games

This time is specific for development of Maddi’s cognitive development. The area of focus for Maddison is called Executive Function. This includes, reasoning, problem solving, and inference, planning and organizing.

All of the activities I plan are intended to help her develop those pathways in her brain. This is essential for her to be able to make decisions throughout her life. Long after this season has past, Maddi will need those skills.

“Having to relearn everything is hard and kind of frustrating.”

This is an understatement to be sure. Just like Maddi had to learn to access all of her body and motor functions, she is now learning to access the different parts of her brain too. It takes a lot of time and incredible amounts of patience to guide her instead of just doing the thinking for her.

Puzzles are a great problem solving activity. We started with the easy 24 piece puzzles. Now we are working on 500 piece puzzles. I have divided the puzzle into smaller groups. I have done this for my first graders to make these big problems approachable. This has worked really well for Maddi.

Before the accident Maddi wasn’t a big puzzle person but Maddi 2.0 has found an obsession. The hardest thing is to get her to take a brain break when she becomes cognitively fatigued. We do a lot of writing also. Writing requires planning, problem solving and organizing. She also has to choose a topic and decide on the relating details as well as choose appropriate wording for what she is trying to say. This is a great activity; however it is a difficult task for Maddi.

Her thinking is very concrete and she doesn’t seem to generalize ideas right now. She has great ideas but needs a little help getting her to “spin” the words and ideas around. She tires easily during this activity.

I think part of her fatigue has to do with the frustration of remembering how much she enjoyed this activity. Writing was always something she did for fun as a part of expressing her creativity. I am just glad she is a hard worker and doesn’t shy away from difficult things.

The way I help her is all about waiting and asking the right questions. The questions need to allow her to think her way through it. Sometimes I do it well and other times I have to really work at not doing the thinking for her. She is improving so much but it just takes so much time! All of the academic and cognitive tasks take so much time.

Functional Activities

Cooking

Laundry

Cleaning

Organizing; closets, menus, shopping lists

Planning; meals, schedules

We divide our time between the Academic/Cognitive and the Functional ones. Functional activities are all those things that you teach your children as they grow, making the bed, folding laundry, cooking, cleaning. With Maddi it isn’t that she can’t do them but it is more about the organization of doing those tasks.

This is probably the easiest part of the day for me. The most difficult part is the time involved. I can have my house clean in a very short time but the process and time is more important with Maddi. We get to work in the kitchen, clean the bathrooms or do the household things that need to be done. The focus and follow through are areas of concern while working with Maddi. All of the functional activities have multiple steps required for completion, remembering all of those steps and following them in the order can be difficult.

I describe it like this; all of the steps are known and she can do them but they are in a hat without any organization. She has to pull them out and keep it all straight. This doesn’t happen by accident, it takes direct teaching and specific strategies that help her compensate for the injuries in her brain.

It will take time but the outcome will be so much better if we do it now. Honestly, it is too early to determine her deficits but she has many strengths! I know that for most people the accident was so long ago, but for us this part of the journey is still very real and complicated. I can’t push too hard but I have to push hard enough. There is such a line to dance around in this area.

It would be so much easier to just send Maddi back to school and decide that what we have is, all there is, but that wouldn’t be fair to Maddi. Her on going rehabilitation requires one on one teaching. Hard work and frustration are part of the day but at least we have the day and Maddi is here to be frustrated. Maddi is such a trooper!

Maddison rarely complains and is so willing to do whatever I ask of her. I am so grateful for that! Her attitude makes this journey so much better. If she was resistant, ornery and negative, I would feel the need to retreat but, for the most part, she is delightful. I don’t do very well when I am with people who only see the empty glass.

Maddi’s positive attitude helps me on the days that I am discouraged too! I think we help each other. We are so fortunate that Maddi’s recovery is going so well. Life is good and I am enjoying life with her and my other great kids. It is an adjustment but just like the time at the hospital, the Lord is helping us through this season too!

It is amazing to me how many times my prayers are answered during scripture reading. I would be lost without the Spirit to guide me! We are so grateful!

I finished Pres. Monson’s Biography and I miss having him as my personal mentor. I found reading that book helped me in so many ways. It gave me an insight to his approach to hard things. I might just read the book again just for that benefit. If you haven’t read it, I would highly recommend it.

Now you know what our days look like!

Moving Forward!