Monday, January 26, 2009

A “Salad” Day

Yesterday was a pretty good day, with just a few moments of arguments mixed in here and there.
Ricki came home from school, and excitedly showed me a pair of “glasses” she received at school, which refracted and split light into a rainbow of colors. I was gratified that she was enthusiastic about her studies. I was less enthused over her reluctance to wear her regular eyewear….
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Ricki pulled her “daily report” sheet from her school bag, and sighed with exasperation as she noticed that her aide had not had a chance to mark down her two “smileys” (smile stickers) for the last hour of classes. She quickly took a pen and marked them in. Her pencil only hovered for a fraction of a section over the point-area for wearing her hearing aid. She chose truth and made an “X”.
I was so proud of her for being honest.
* * * * * * *
We had “puppet club” in the afternoon (next-to-the-last time). Ricki was insisting on wearing a bulky sweater that I had set aside to give away, it looking too atrocious on her for use. How she noticed it high on the closet is beyond me. But notice it she did, and she was enraptured by the pink color. Any considerations to the contrary were not being considered as admissible to the “court”. And this was besides the fact that she had her heart set on wearing sandals in the cold. [Now I believe that one learns best from experience, but I was not prepared for her to loose schooling due to illness as a result of a single act of (GULP I hate to say it, but of) idiocy.] I finally told her that she could wear what she likes, but that I was not going out of the house if that was the way she was going to be dressed. I hate to strong-arm her, but sometimes I feel that I really have little choice. How I am going to teach her to choose flattering clothing (or to submit to external review) is beyond me. I am simply envisioning her traipsing around ten years from now in outfits that will be totally horrid. I didn’t think about this when deciding to keep her………
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After the puppet club, where, incidentally she acted quite nicely, and for once didn’t stuff herself with snacks, we returned home to an evening of homework. I was relieved and gratified that she actually tackled the task with a satisfactory amount of effort. It was one of her better evenings, and she was able to top the homework lessons off with a session of “Freddie the Fish” on the computer.

A “salad” day.

1 comment:

Trish said...

There's a company called LucasWorks that comes to our Autism Awareness walks and sells a variety of products, including an Apparel Indicating Weather Thermometer. Whether she would choose to follow it I don't know, but you could see what she thinks about it.

Glad you had a good day!