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| Shirt says, "It wasn't me!" I think it was. |
"Your child will be a vegetable."
"They'll never know you."
"They'll suffer their whole lives."
"They'll wreck your marriage."
"They'll ruin your kids' lives."
"You're going to make a child suffer just for you to feel good?"
And so on.
Um, yeah... Let me tell you what my "vegetable" has been up to lately.
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| Watching fishies at Shriners |
Anyway, back to my vegetable, who doesn't interact, communicate, or recognize anyone.
At home, we mostly are using his Tobii (computer) to reinforce skills needed to operate it. He's got a couple games he enjoys playing. One is just a cute coloring one that when he fills in the picture animates it. Another is a space game that blows up asteroids, waves flags, or launches a rocket if he's patient enough to look at it for a four second countdown. It doesn't take off very often.
But the favorite one is a pie throwing game. He was "okay" with that one in the beginning but it was kinda ho-hum. The game comes with six generic pictures of people and animals, but you can change those out. He's got six brothers. I decided to see if I could reignite his interest. Can you see where this is going? Except Michael decided he didn't want a pie in his face, and twice switched his picture for Aaron's. It took me a couple days to figure it out.
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| That bright light in his hand? It's his pulse/ox probe. It's supposed to be on his toe... |
In the meantime, he was loving the game! Pies flew fast and furious. The first time I found his picture on there, I thought I'd programmed it wrong and switched it. Then it happened again the next day and I realized what was happening. What I didn't know was that he'd been playing at school, too. And his teacher reported that he simply wouldn't pie his own face! His brothers? No problem. Not his own. He not only recognizes his brothers, he's out to get them, and he knows when it's his own face there, and that he doesn't want to get pied.
I had a conference with his teacher this week in regards to his progress at school. She reports that he's doing very well, mastered all his academic goals. One was shapes, being able to identify all of the basic shapes. He did, but with a bit of an attitude, like "really, are you serious?" The principal asked him what he thought, and he used his computer to tell her it was boring. Then he told his teacher SHE was boring. Yeah, we might have to have a conversation about manners...
He's good at math, but loves science. They did a science unit on smells. He asked her why water doesn't smell!!!! WHAT????? I don't think I even realized water didn't smell at that age. Did you?
Anyway, we'll be putting together new goals, including reading sight words. Right now, he selects pictures to put his sentences together.
And then for those who haven't been in state, we got a huge snowstorm overnight Tuesday into Wednesday. It took me about 15 minutes to decide that Aaron wasn't going out in it. Frankly, I'm in the group that says our schools should have been canceled anyway, but that's a different story. (If you want to see some funny memes, check out this link.) I still had to go to work because I'm a sub and living only a mile from the school, I knew I could get there, but I gave Aaron and Michael the day off. When I got home, I asked Aaron if he enjoyed his snow day. This was his response.
Yep, definitely not a vegetable. Maybe a nut, but not a vegetable.
"Our potential lies between what is and what could be."
Kim Butler
