Frustrations

Charlie:
I've never seen a child have a pretty-much continuous temper tantrum for almost an hour. This was the second session with the OT at Shriners for Charlie. Everything she tried was met with not only resistance, but resistance with an added dash of red face, shaking arms, quivering chin, screaming, and stomping. I was torn between laughing, anger, and the extreme desire to insist that I'd never seen him before.

It was tough because there could be so many reasons for his reaction. Ride on cars and push toys have always been challenging for Charlie and he may have been trying to tell us that they were just too much. With his postural insecurity, it is natural that these types of activies be hard. (I guess on the brighter side of things I never have to worry about his wanting a motorcycle.)

On the other hand, Charlie is two. Towards the end of the session, even things that he might have normally been interested in, were horrible. The boy wanted to be left ALONE. It's amazing how well that comes across despite not having many words. Notwithstanding this (or maybe because of it), she wants to see him once a week for a while. I think that's good. Unfortunately, I have to go too.

Jack:
Jack's first school presentation is almost upon us and I'm already tired. He picked a research question "How do knights stop dragons" and it was approved by his teacher. The process is supposed to be fairly straight forward. At the age of 5, he is expected (with help) to come up with an idea, research the answer, and make a presentation to his class. He is also supposed to make a product. I was fairly suprised by his topic. He has been so passionately consumed with dinosaurs that I was sure that he would decide to learn about them. Much to my shock, his favorite dino (the T-rex), didn't even make his short list. I asked him about it, and he looked at me, smiled kindly, and explained like you would to a two-year old, that he already knew about t-rex's. Well, excuse me.

Any-ho, we have now reached the research phase of his work and he is supremely uninterested. Plus, I'm a little stymied. You see, dragons aren't real. I guess that means that whatever answer we come up with has to be right but I'm a bit more concrete than that. And, it's hard to find a book on the matter. We got books on knights and books on dragons. We've talked about making his presentation about how a knight could stop a dragon if they were real. We've talked about making a cardboard shield and sword. Now we just need to link his topic to the school-wide theme of "adaptation." Martini's anyone?