The rules

There has got to be common ground. I have started this blog to give people a place to tell their stories...positive stories . Too often we are mired down in the hows and whys, causes and cures. It is easy to forget that we are talking about people. One of the misconceptions that I have run into is that because I have children with disabilities-I am not allowed to have joy-nor are my children allowed to be joyful. Some of the comments I have received after relaying a funny story or anecdote...well you would think I had been kicking kittens.
So here are the rules. Anyone can submit a story,OR just a couple of sentences,OR a list of five great things either about their children or themselves. It must be positive, There will be no discusion of causes, cures, treatments, etc. There are more than enough places for that. Mean people will be deleted. If you are interested in taking part in this adventure please submit your story to kickingkittens@live.com please no pictures or video-lets keep it simple.

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Hooray! Gl learned to use scissors today!!

Another really wonderful post from Goldilocks and the three Bears...






Goldilocks has many struggles with fine motor skills. We've been focusing on the most essential, but trying everything, and cheering and encouraging any success, however small. Scissors was one I'd just about given up on. He tends to hold the scissors backwards, with the blades pointing toward him, and even when we can get them turned around, he rotates his wrist so the blades are parallel to the surface he is trying to cut. Then the thing he wants to cut just slides between the blades, and he is once again convinced that the task is impossible: these scissor things just don't ever work! And since we're not doing a lot of kindergarten art projects, there are more urgent skills to work on.

He loves microwave popcorn. He can safely run the microwave (it has a popcorn button); he just needs to get the bag of popcorn out of its plastic outer wrapper first. Sometimes the end of the wrapper is two layers fused together, and relatively easy to separate. Sometimes there is a small notch to make it easier to tear open. Others are difficult or impossible to open without a knife or scissors. He was trying to open one of the latter packages this morning and asked for help (a good sign to begin with). I was about to do it for him, when I thought, "Let him try. What can it hurt? If it doesn't work, I can still open it for him."

So I handed him the scissors, and with verbal instructions and a little help with hand placement, he snipped a notch and tore open the package! Hooray! He may or may not be able to do this next week, tomorrow, or even later today, but at age 13, he successfully cut something with scissors for the first time!

1 comment:

Kim Wombles said...

Yay! Sometimes those skills are so slow in coming, and sometimes repeating them is scattershot, but each new success feels wonderful, both to our kids and us! My bright boy in this past year has begun to cook simple meals on the stove with some supervision; we weren't sure that would ever happen! :-)