What is a good week? How can it be measured, defined, quantified for student records, written down and passed on to future educators, therapists.

Sometimes the good things are slippery, hard to define and record. Emotions don’t always follow the department of educations need for ridged structure and dot point meeting minutes.

Recently we had a good week.

Heidi went to school every day.

5 days in a row.

First time all year.

That is a good week.

She let us brush her hair on 4 of those days.

That is a good week.

We were even able to get her hair up in a little pony tail for the first 3 days.

and it stayed up for the whole day on the first 2 days.

That is unheard of.

There was no sleepwalking until the fourth night.

We even managed to read her nightly reader without meltdowns.

Heidi wanted to go to school.

There was no tear storms at the end of the day.

How do you test that?

Where do we record these things?

I don’t know, but what I can say with great certainty and joy is…

We had a good week.

We pulled into a train station, I don’t know the name of it, the day was starting to blur, 6.5 hours of travel and still another hour to go.

A man was standing on the platform, his golf umbrella folded beside him, a spot of garish brightness against the grey. The rain had stopped he didn’t need the umbrella anymore.

Everything was grey, it was an unsettling reflection of my mood, grey skies, grey fences and seats and the puddles on the black tarmac reflecting back the grey skies.

As Annie and I watched the man with the umbrella greet his friend off the train, Annie turned to me and said “when will it stop raining?”

The combination of visual prompts, umbrella, puddles, grey skys = rain, in her mind, even though the rain had stopped long before we got on the train.

Annie and I were lucky enough to visit Surfers Paradise on a day the beach was closed. It was beautiful, no tourists, we had the beach to ourselves for a glorious 10 minutes. I can see why it was named Surfers Paradise.

Pictures are straight off my camera, no editing, click on a picture to embiggen.

Have you ever gone somewhere and just found patterns repeating over and over? I suspect it is intentional design choice at the Broadwater Parklands on the Gold Coast.

These pictures are straight off my camera, no editing as I’m still on holidays. Click to a picture embiggen.

I have a few more I really like but can’t figure out how to turn them so they are the right way up on this borrowed PC.

It is funny the reactions we get when people hear about Annie going to speech therapy. The most common is “But she talks really well, why does she need speech therapy?”

There is a misconception that speech therapy is all about verbal communication.

It is so much more.

Speech therapy really could be renamed communication therapy.

Annie and our amazing speech therapist work out strategies for anger management and how to recognise the warning signs, brain storm ideas for being a good host at birthday parties, build a story writing template for creative writing homework.

It is just amazing to watch the process unfold. Take that last one, building a story writing template for creative writing homework.

Me I just sit down and write the story and it flows. I might plot out a couple of points in my head. But Annie, she struggles with sequencing her ideas, oh my does she have ideas, beautiful, visually strong images in her head that she wishes to turn into a story. When she tries to write the ideas down they get stuck, something happens between her brain and the page and we end up with a very frustrated Annie.

Our therapist has built a template that works with Annie’s unique skills and helps her create the most gorgeous stories.

Speech therapy, so much more than verbal communication.

It was Annie’s birthday last week.

We had cake with the outlaws inlaws:

Cake with our close friends (Cake by: Fernando and the Sugar Sisters):

And cake at a birthday sleepover party:

So.Much.Cake.

With an honorablue mention to Birthday Week’s Most Valuable Player: Robert the Roomba

Thank you Robert. Without your assistance none of this may have been as much fun.

Heidi is still very anxious at school and has been taking a transition toy to school every day. Taking a toy is not an issue but sometimes her choice of toy is not the most appropriate for school, other days there is a huge drama at home in the morning as Heidi can’t cope with having to choose one toy to take.

After discussion with Heidi’s teacher, psych and OT we have decided to get one toy that will live at school, it had to be a new toy as Heidi associates her current toys with home. I got Batman as Heidi thinks he is pretty awesome and wrote this social story to go with him.

Batman Lives at My School

 A story just for Heidi.

By Mummy

My friend Batman lives in my classroom. He sits near me on my desk or in the wet area.

Batman likes to help me feel happy at school; if I am sad I can give Batman a cuddle.

If I am worried I can hold Batman and he will help me fight the worries away.

Sometimes I might like to hold or cuddle Batman for other reasons and that is okay.

Batman enjoys going to the library with me and to art as well.

Batman can go to other places with me to like the music room and the school office or somewhere else and that is okay.

Batman does not come home with me after school.

Batman lives at my school, at night he plays with the toys in my classroom and visits his friends in the library and the Prep classroom.

Batman always comes back to my classroom by the start of the school day.

During the school day Batman is there just for me because he likes to help me feel happy at school.

It was Annie’s birthday party with all the inlaws coming over, we had ordered a bunch of pizzas but I thought it might be good to put out some salads. Annie is obsessed with Caesar Salad so that was an easy choice but what else could I make? The Aussie Farmers Direct fruit and veggie box had contained a purple cabbage, pomegranate and lots of carrots. So I decided on experimental coleslaw.

Ingredients:

• 3 cups finely shredded purple cabbage
• Seeds from 1 pomegranate
• 5 carrots finely shredded
• 1 bottle coleslaw dressing.

Method:

1. Remove seeds from pomegranate.
2. Shred cabbage and carrots very finely – I blitzed them in a food processor.
3. Mix together with coleslaw dressing.

It was surprisingly tasty. Who knew.

“Mama I skeered, cuddles?”

We snuggle in my bed for a moment.

“Mama I need to go toilet, you come wid me an turn da lights on.”

We go to the toilet, I turn the lights on and leave her to it.

She comes back to my bed and snuggles in.

“It’s squishy mama. My bed is lonely, you should go sleep der. I look after daddy.”

And she rolls over and goes to sleep.

I try to get comfortable in my bed, but she is correct, it is squishy. So I head to her bed, at least it won’t be lonely now.

11pm all is quiet.  I’m having trouble unwinding and sleep is distant, a banging noise disturbs the quiet and I get up to investigate.

Annie is under her covers, ‘spy gear’ night vision goggles on her head, the LED light glowing onto her book, reading. Quiet as a mouse, we thought she was asleep.

I take the book and try to persuade her to sleep, knowing myself how elusive sleep can be when worries haunt you.

The melatonin isn’t working tonight.

We talk for a little while, Annie keeps coming back to her book, she only has one chapter to go, she wont be able to sleep until she finishes it.

I give in, hand over the book and she immediately starts reading. While she finishes the chapter I take another walk around the house, doors and windows still closed and locked, lights are still all switched off, Heidi peacefully sleeping.

Once her chapter is finished Annie turns off the light and promptly falls sound asleep.

Sometimes a good story is better medicine than all the drugs in the world.