Progress to Report

I just realized the other day that we have made some immense progress in sensory integration. Just 6 months ago, S would NOT wear a jacket and certain textures of clothing. She wears a jacket without protest now, it used to be screaming and ripping it off. She will wear different textures that she wouldn't tolerate before. She actually touches and play with play doh now, she used to pull her hand away from it like it was something foul. She plays with moon sand, another texture she hated. We can brush ALL of her teeth for almost as long as we want to. She is eating some real food these days, not a lot, but way more than 6 months ago. The best part of this is that she has not had any other intervention but NR. The biggest progress I noticed was just last week. I was at the hair salon and she was on the floor playing with some toys. Someone turned on a blow dryer, which normally would have sent her into a panic and leaping into my arms. I was braced for her, when I observed her casually look in the direction of the sound and then go back to playing. This was nothing short of a miracle. She is also making progress in attachment. She plays the little mommy, slinging a bag over her shoulder and saying, "Bye, see you later." "I'll be back soon." I'm going to the grocery store." I remember getting advice to let her watch me brush my teeth to make her want to do it too. This was way back when she couldn't care less what I was doing. She plays with her doll like a little mother, which makes me happy when I see how she pretents to care for her. She does lift the doll out of the high chair by her hair, something I can assure you she has NEVER observed by me or anyone else. I tell her she is hurting her baby and she just laughs at my reaction. Okay, so we're not there yet, but progress is progress. She immediately says, "I'm sorry mommy" when she's done something I don't like. How I wish I had a crystal ball, or maybe not..

Wow!

I have some great news to report! Today was gymnastics class, last week daddy took her. He told me how she took turns on the trampoline and sat down and waited the minute she was told to give someone else a turn. I thought that was great, but didn't think too much about it. Today I got to see this miraculous event for myself. When another child came up to the trampoline and I told her she needed to give him a turn, she immediately ran to the side and sat down, waiting patiently for her turn. She did this time and time again, much to my amazement. I have never seen her this self regulated in my life. It could be because of the vestibular and sensory stimulation allowed her to stay calm, I just don't know. She can be doing all kinds of activity like that at the park without the same results. Maybe it's the bouncing of the trampoline that she needs. If that works, you'll soon be seeing a trampoline in our back yard. This is the glimmer of hope I needed. Isn't it weird that if you could see into the future and know everything will be okay, that none of this would worry you? On another good not, S allowed me to position her for the tonic neck reflex. She has been uncooperative thus far. It's not one that you can make them do it they don't cooperate. That's all for now.

Advice

Okay, I've talked to Bette about our issues. It all becomes much clearer when you can talk it out with someone who has insight as to what might be going on. She thinks these new behaviors are being caused by anxiety. I agree that is what it looks like. We can do compressions and body holding to help her get de-stressed and re-regulated. Remaining calm will be the hardest part, I tend to act a milli-second before thinking. Big character flaw, but I constantly work on it. I admit I started out calm, but when nothing worked, I resorted to yelling her name loudly hoping it would startle her into action. No such luck with a traumatized child who has tuned out all she cares to avoid. It's hard to speak softly when she has ripped the glasses off of someone's face and threw them. Bette also suggested theanine, which I will take myself to lower cortisol levels. I have many other life factors which are contributing to this situation, blah.....

So I'm going forth with renewed optimism again. If I can continually view her issues as being scared and stressed, it will be easy to treat her with the softness and compassion she deserves to get through it. I look at it like my phobia, there isn't anyone who can talk sense into me that the stupid little insect cannot hurt me. I'm afraid of it even when it's dead. I don't need someone to tell me not to be afraid, it just doesn't work. I need someone to tell me they understand and get me as far away as they possibly can before the ugly thing springs back to life! How horrible to think she might be having fears like that. I guess that's why she's my kid. I can hug her and carry her away to another couch when she's " 'fraid couch" even though the couch can't hurt her. She refers to herself in the 3rd person when she says she's afraid. Bette said that the 2 sides of the brain aren't communicating, and we need to plug on with the tonic neck pattern. I think that that is what stirred this up to begin with. This is going to be harder than I thought. We'll get through it one way or another.

January 2010 misc. observations

It never ceases to amaze me how powerful simple crawling can be. I guess my irregular schedule of exercises has proven to be somewhat of a good thing. Since the only therapy we are doing is NR at this point, I can easily identify behaviors and changes due to following the program. I am so confused and frustrated at this point, something that is hard to admit. While my life is filled with things to worry about, if I compare myself to the average person, I am quite fortunate. I live each day as if it were my last, and I am grateful for every moment I'm given. I wish I had some clear cut answers when it comes to solving my daughter's issues. What is the cause of her problems, sensory processing disorder, RAD, prematurity, or a non fully integrated neurological system? Do I treat all at the same time? Do I experiment with different therapies until I find something that works? I know most people who do NR do several therapies at once and the practitioners encourage that. I will use more than one if I need to, but for now I'd like to do one at a time. We are going to explore attachment therapy, I think that is crucial at this point. I guess I keep hoping for a magic solution or the light bulb moment when something specific is pinpointed and a magic solution revealed.

I had one of those knock the wind out of your sails moment yesterday when I heard a 9 year old girl describe S as 'very energetic' and a few other descriptive words that stabbed me right in the heart. S can have very calm moments, but they aren't frequent. She can play with something she likes for very long periods of time, but other times she buzzing around the room. Her little stages she goes through are relatively short lived. Just when I start getting worried about them, they disappear. The latest is a little throat clearing sound. I remember reading something about it on the Neuro group, but I doubt I'll get time to go back and investigate it. Time seems to be the biggest issue. If only I had time to do it all, I'm sure everyone feels this way. I hate the time it takes to type all of this out, but it is actually theraputic for me to get it out. I don't want to forget where we've come from in this journey and how far we've made it. My intention is for this to help others through it all. I plan to be able to post when we've graduated, I hope that's not too far away. It will probably be another year, especially at my pace. I'd like to think that more people are like me and aren't perfect in getting 100% in every day. This way they can be encouraged that they can still get to the end by going a little slower, and won't give up because they've had to take a break. I think the program is bringing up things that S can't verbalize, and it's causing the things we are seeing now. She is very scared of a lot of things. We carry her a lot, which I don't mind because it's great for attachment. The newest thing that has come up is that she lets out this little utterance of panic, like she just saw somthing that startled her. It seems to be connected to the throat clearing thing. It almost sounds like the grumting sort of sounds that autistic kids sometimes make. Yes, this scares the heck out of me. Are we dealing with autism? I don't think so, I highly doubt it would just show up now. I've thought back to anything that might have changes in our lives and I thought of something very disturbing. She's had some pretty big bumps on her forehead from bumping her head. She didn't have any significant falls, but she's still had a couple of sizable lumps on her head in the past month. I think if she had some type of damage that we would see it in other areas. The poor thing seems to be prone to injury on her head. It doesn't help that she head bangs when she is frustrated.

I guess the last thing is that there is no one person who is going through the same exact thing. It doesn't mean that no one can help, but I still feel alone. I have a couple of good friends who are good listeners, and that is priceless. Friends come and go, but all you need is one or two who you can be there for and they do the same for you. I've had other friends who are adoptive parents also, but just like any other situation, if your child is making more progress than theirs, they tend to dump you. Same thing happens if they get beyond the bad stuff before you do, they don't want to be in that category anymore, so you get dumped again. Such is life.