Beth has been reading a lot lately. I’m very proud of the fact that she has always loved being read to and reading to herself. We were visiting for a playdate to my friend Bec’s house and Bec commented how lovely it was that Beth was sitting and reading aloud to herself. When she got home she somehow got on to a list of children’s names on the computer. She sat for over half an hour going through each name in alphabetical order until she got to the end of the list. It reminded me of when Rainman read the phone book. Now I just need to teach her to read the cards at the casino and we’ll be set for life!
We’ve had a nice few days. We went out for dinner last night with my Dad and my niece and nephew. We go to a local pizza parlour which has paper on the tables. This is great for my kids as we take textas and they draw pictures until our food comes. Beth drew the bananas in pyjamas. She then drew two grapes dressed up and told me they were the grapes in pyjamas. She even wrote G1 and G2 on them! Bill joined in and commented that as the Bananas in Pyjamas were boys the grapes must be girls as they start with a B and a G. Beth thought this was wonderful. When we left Beth did one of her loud and gruff BYE BYE’s. It was far too loud and I told her so, poor Robert who runs the pizza shop looked quite shocked. I told Beth that it wasn’t appropriate and she told me that it was embarassing. I told her that yes it was so could she please not do it so loud. I don’t mind the way she says it, just not the volume that she does it.
We had Sensational Kids today, just with Rod. We had to change our appointment for yesterday and we couldn’t get in to see the Occupational Therapist too. Beth wanted to read a book so Rod (our speech therapist) went along with that. The whole basis for the way they do their therapy is to follow the lead of the child. Rod told Beth that she could read the book (Tarzan) as long as she answered questions at the end of each paragraph. At first Beth found it quite difficult, especially when the questions related to meanings behind the actions of the characters in the book. For example the male chimpanzee was angry at the Tarzan boy child for putting other chimpanzees in danger with making the elephants stampede. Beth couldn’t explain why he must have been angry. After a while she got the hang of it and even at the end of the session was quite disappointed that Rod couldn’t ask her any more questions. I was impressed with her reasoning about a meaning of a word during the session. Usually she asks the meaning if she doesn’t know but clearly thought she knew the meaning. The word was ‘encouraged.’ When Rod asked her what it meant she said it meant brave. I know that the word brave wouldn’t have fitted in the sentence but she was looking at the word courage and I thought it was clever of her to relate the two, even if wrong.
When we left I asked her to practice her quiet BYE BYE to the reception staff as the room was quite full. Instead of doing the funny voice she very politely said ‘Goodbye Rob, Goodbye Lorette,’ and waved nicely. It was so lovely to hear. I often think she’s got a lovely way about her when it comes to others. She compliments easily and always remembers peoples names and things they have told her about themselves. Not many kids would bother but Beth has a lovely approach to other people. That’s something that we can all have a bit more of.
