...since I posted. And no, I haven't been that busy. ;) I actually started a post last week (that I may finish at some point) talking about Dima. We had a rough few days last week behavior-wise, but the day that I started that post things started to turn around and I never finished it.
Dima's definitely doing some testing at school, probing boundaries. What he hasn't completely figured out yet is that I am keeping in very close contact with his teacher, so when she says he did/didn't do xx today I can tell her whether that's behavior that we've seen at home, where I think it's coming from, and give her suggestions on how to handle it. Unfortunately, she can't handle it quite the same way we would at home, but his behavior is improving. The biggest problems seem to stem from the behavior of the other kids. Dima sees them doing things and thinks it's a good idea, but he doesn't always know the appropriate time or place for all behaviors. He's going through a behavior-learning process that most kids go through around age 3-4 but he hasn't had the opportunity to go through it before so it's happening now. He's getting there, but it's going to take awhile. One of the areas he struggles with (which I think relates directly to a background in the orphanage) is understanding that he cannot touch or play with other people's things. In the orphanage everything was communal, so it's hard for him to grasp that coats, hats, pencils, toys, etc., actually belong to people and that he cannot touch them. I'm not really sure of the best way to reinforce that concept, so if anyone has any ideas feel free to throw them our way. :) We do talk about things that the boys bring home belonging to them and that the other one cannot play with those objects without asking, i.e., "this is Zhenya's from school", "this is Dima's from church", but the boys pretty much share everything equally at home (their choice).
I am very pleased to report that his wailing fits have greatly decreased. I think this is due to a combination of the sticker charts as well as realizing that they don't get him what he wants--in fact, just the opposite. They tend to show up when he's had a busy day and is really tired, so it's directly related to him being too tired to control his emotions. But I think he's learning that that is not an appropriate way to show emotions and he does try hard not to let it get going when he's not tired. This is a hard habit for him to break (and it truly is a habit) and I'll be so excited when he can go an entire month without having one of these fits. We've gotten close but we're not there yet. :)
We've been looking into speech therapy for Dima. And every time I start looking into it he has a massive improvement in his speech and I wonder if we should just give him more time. But I think we're doing him a disservice by not helping him in this area. We send him to OT for his motor skills--why would we not send him to speech therapy for such a crucial component of interacting with other people? For one thing, it's not covered by insurance. We also feel that it would be too much for Dima to have both speech and OT during school. So we're waiting on some information from a couple of speech clinics and continuing OT in the meantime.
And Zhenya? Well, Zhenya is Zhenya. ;) He's currently going through a baby-talk phase, which we are highly discouraging. I think this is coming from some of the other kids in his class who are quite a bit younger than he is. Again, we see this predominately when he's tired (read: overstimulated) but this is not a behavior we had seen before he started school.
And...we're going on a cruise soon! :) :) I'm not posting the exact dates for safety reasons, but it's soon and I'm super excited, as are the boys. They can't wait to go on the "big boat." Boy, aren't they going to be surprised when they see just how big it is! Zhenya also wants to go on the "little boats" (aka lifeboats) and lucky for him we've got a couple of ports where we'll be tendering and using the lifeboats.
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5 comments:
We struggled a lot too with the concept that some things are mine, yours, ours, etc.....and this was with a new 6 and 11 year old.
We agreed to be very firm with reinforcing this at home, and made them ask every time they touched something that wasn't theirs.
If I saw them playing with something not theirs, I would say, "did you ASK?" and if the answer was no, it was taken away from them, even if it was something the other person did not care if they used. The problem was, they thought they should be allowed to touch whatever they wanted, and they were not able to discern which things might not be okay to touch without asking. SOOOOO....thats why we had the "ask about everything" rule.
Now, a year later, they have much better discernment, and are able for the most part to ask when they need. There are still times I see them with something of mine, and I will say "is that yours?" (no)
"did you ask?" (no) and make them return it, and appropriate discipline...depending on a lot of other factors....
Ah, Baby talk. Lyra is baby talking too and even Solomon sometimes. I just tell them "I can't understand you when you talk like a baby" (because half the time I can't) and tell them to come find me when they are ready to ask the question normally. LOL!
As for speech, I can relate. I have considered speech therapy a half dozen times but every time I do, she has a huge improvement spell. Right now, I am convinced that we will NOT need therapy since she is talking in full, articulate sentences and using pronouns better every day. In two months I may be thinking "we need speech therapy" again. Problem is that I take so long doing something about it that she has another improvement and I think she doesnt need it anymore. A freind who works with speech delayed children says she is fine so I will probably just go with that. She's not at "normal" 3.5 year old speech yet, but I guess when you get started late it takes a while sometimes.
We're adoptive parents to two "older boys" from Ukraine -- ages 3.5 and 5.25 at time of adoption in early 2005. (Our sons are now 7 and 8.75, and we are 3.5 years home.) Like another of your commenters, we were very consistent with an "ask before touching anything" policy for about 1.5 years. Like your boys, our sons shared everything really well, and they mostly continue too. However, over time, each boy has developed protective feelings over various of his things. Also, we parents are pretty protective of some of our stuff. Plus, we just figured that in this society it's important for individuals to be able to respect private property. So we were very "strict" with "if it's not yours, don't touch it/walk on it/put your foot on it/etc/etc/etc without asking first". We also took things away if the rule had not been adhered to. Now the boys are pretty good about respecting property boundaries.
On the speech front: Both of our kids have had some speech issues. I would classify their issues as moderate; they included dropping of whole syllables or segments of a word or sentence, failing to use certain sounds (e.g., "sh" "th" "r") despite being able to, and extreme fast speech that was almost nonsensical because of being so fast. Our speech pathologist in the school uses a pretty simple rule to determine whether kids should be in speech therapy sessions: if their speech is impeding their classroom learning at their grade level. For example, if the child's spelling starts to be affected due to speech issues, then that requires speech therapy. Otherwise, she does regular assessments to ensure she's not missing anything and to monitor kids' speech development to ensure that they are on a good developmental trajectory. She really stressed to us that our kids were not their age in english. They were actually only 1 year old in their english, or only 2 years old, and so on. For their "age in english," their speech was actually right on. And they went through their ages in english crazy fast. Our older son spent half of his grade 1 year in actual school-based therapy sessions about twice a week, forming the habit of using one of his sounds, and now it looks like son #2 will be doing that now that he's in grade 1. The speech therapist gave us exercises we could do with our sons in the home that really seemed to make a big difference, but they may have been more about giving us an illusion that we were doing something! Her biggest advice was to model excellent speech: speak slowly and precisely, try to be always facing the child, echo what they just said but emphasizing the correct way to say it, and don't sweat it. With kid #1, we always seemed to sweat it and in the end it all worked out just fine without our really doing anything but continually sweating it! With kid #2, we have been able to be more relaxed, and I can see he's going to be fine too, though I think he will need a bit of therapy help just like his older brother did. So my advice to you would be to get them assessed by a professional, either school-based or outside the school, and find out that person's advice. But also model really good speech with them, and generally slow down your expectations (easier said than done).
Regarding your comments on speech:
I know every state is different, but in Georgia you are eligible for county/public school services even if your child is in private school (William is in private). We took him for an intial eval. and then she told us what she thought and (per state law) gave us 6 weeks of at-home worksheets and assignments - that's required before she is allowed to make a referral. She was super-friendly and admitted she had very little experience with European backgrounds, saying most of her experience was with Spanish speakers or children from Asian countries. But she told us that most of William's issues are typical for a 6-year-old boy, and said based on what she was hearing he was borderline for a referral. The stuff she gave us is helping immensely and he's improved a lot already. She even offered to let him stop by periodically on Friday afternoons (that's when she does evaluations) and she could check up on him & give us new things to work on.
All I did to get the ball rolling was to call the elementary school where he would go for public school and ask to speak to a speech therapist.
We are eligible for speech through the public schools, but it's REALLY hard to get it here. Did you hear about St Louis City's public schools being taken over by the State? Yeah, they're not so hot. I called the school speech people last spring and got transferred around several different times, then spent a few weeks playing phone tag with a woman who eventually just stopped calling me back. I've heard from other parents in the city that if your child isn't in the public schools, they make it really difficult to get services.
I may try your suggestion, Jennifer, of calling the local elementary school and see if that gets me anywhere. While I don't know that he NEEDS speech therapy (i.e., will not be able to speak correctly eventually without it) it would certainly help him with where he's at now.
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