For a solid month Anya played her heart out here. She thoroughly enjoyed the new people, the new toys, and the house with all kinds of rooms to explore. Leaving the house was a source of distress for her so we tried to keep that to a minimum, but still slowly get her acclimated to being in public. Since the month mark Anya has decided that the novelty of all of this has worn off. She has suddenly decided that the toys here are boring, the rooms have been explored to the extent that we will let her explore them, and going out in public is a fun new adventure now that she's convinced no one is going to take her and run. Because of this Anya spends a good part of her day following us around and asking to eat or go bye bye CONSTANTLY. How is it that a child who lived 5 years of her life in a room the size of my bedroom with hardly anything to play with can decide in a month that she must be thoroughly entertained at all times or life is boring?! As I type this she is standing at the table staring at Evan while he is eating lunch hoping to get some...she JUST ate a very good lunch....and then every 15 seconds or so she turns to me and asks to go bye bye. She does this by blowing kisses. I finally just started blowing them back at her because I've made it clear that we are not going bye bye right now.
When Oksana came home there were a couple of things I could do if I needed to entertain her for a good period of time. Any water play would thrill her for a long time and she was amazing at not making a huge mess. She'd also watch one short video (that is still her attention span for tv) if I really needed down time like when I needed to cook dinner. Those things saved us. It's different with Anya. If I give her water she will create Noah's flood in my house. TV does not interest her unless we are all sitting right there watching it with her and even then she'd prefer not. I've tried shaving cream (not real thrilled with that since she started at it and whined the whole time :), a rice box (imagine Noah's flood but with rice....and that was supervised!), play doh (now she did like this but only for a little while), reading books (still not a big book kid but getting a bit better), and singing songs (this will entertain her endlessly so if you want to sing The Wheels on the Bus 10 Million times in a row come on over!). On the other hand if you leave the bathroom door open she will entertain herself endlessly until you find her with toothpaste all over her face.....but I wouldn't know that from experience ;).
I'm really a loss of what to do with this kid! I still have to homeschool my boys during the day so I can't just run around entertaining her. I'd love to know if anyone has any ideas for a 5 year old with DS, developmentally much closer to 18 months, who spent the 5 years she has been alive in an orphanage, is non-verbal, is a rascal, and doesn't have much English yet!
7 comments:
Pack and Play while she watches a Signing Time video. It will give you a break, has awesome music, and will teach her language.
Teaching her to focus by having her watch a "learning" show in TV isn't a bad thing. Mariah wasn't interested in TV when she came home either, but now she LOVES Max & Ruby and Dora the Explorer. Mariah did like to finger paint too. Oh one great thing I found on pinterest was to put several favorite toys in a small tub of water and freeze it. Then hand your child a toy hammer and walk away :)
I second the Signing Time videos! Thankfully, with kiddo #1, anything water-related was also entertaining. When K first came home, on laundry day, I would spread dirty towels all over the kitchen floor and give him a tub of water/cups/etc. I would also let him paint in the bathtub right with shaving cream/water color right before his bath. I would have tried anything to entertain him for more than 5 minutes :)
I'm sure it's 1000x's harder with multiple children, but what really saved us was making his room basically indestructible and completely baby-proofed. That way, I knew there was one area of the house that he was safe ( you know, for those times when I actually needed to use the restroom), and I would bring out a few "new" toys to play with ONLY in his room. It took some training, but once he understood the concept, it was a lifesaver.
Marni loves nothing more than Signing Time videos but when she first came home it didn't matter what was on that child wanted to go, go, go! I was still homeschooling ALL the kids when she came home and it seemed nearly impossible to do. Thankfully some of the older kids had enough independent work they could handle without me but honestly, we ended up doing the bare minimum with the other kids that year...it just wasn't possible to accomplish all that I wanted.
I tried to homeschool her with Nadia and would put them at the table, I would strap Marni into her booster seat to keep her from running off, climbing on the table, or getting up to grab stuff from Nadia. Still, it was impossible. I would take under a minute giving individual help on something and litterally turn my body just slightly to the other child to work with them while the other had a crayon thinking she could keep herself busy for a moment....ha!! She'd chew on the crayon!!
The Lord clearly let me know that it was time for us to stop homeschooling the majority of the kids, so Marni and a few others are no longer at home during the school day. Now that we have things setup properly at the school, it really has been one of the best things we have done for her, and for me! I don't know that I was ready to rip my hair out but I probably would have by now. ;) The school setting has taught her things that I cannot mimic in the home setting.
Although Alyssa is a much different child (or so it seems thus far), I will be trying to get her into the special needs preschool program at school (she is 6.5). I know because of her age the school will push for kindergarten but I know better than that having done this so many times with a variety of ages and needs...AND I do not want her going to school fulltime, I don't see that being in her best interest. I do, however, think that half days 4 times a week would be verry beneficial for her and still allow us time to bond and for her to adjust.
I remember when Anthony (my only bio) was 3-4 yrs old. I had been insisting that it was best for him to be with me...until I realized that perhaps I was missing something and my ideas about what were best did not consider the particular child but rather an assumption that kids are always better to stay home with their parents. I ended up putting him in preschool and it turned out to be better for both of us, our time together improved tremendously and he was happy and healthy.
I would strongly consider looking into a special needs preschool halfday/part-time program...your public school system should have that free of charge (and should provide her with OT,PT and speech!!). You just may find that you, Anya, AND your other children do much better. It doesn't have to be a permenant commitment, you can always pull her out.
Being able to self entertain is a skill and one she has little to no experience with. You start off with something and work at slowing increasing the time she does it by herself, like a muscle, she has to build up to it. The key is to be conisistant have a timer or something so she knows when time is up.It is a lot of work but can pay off.
Visual schedules that are made up for each day and for everything that will be happening that day and what she needs to be doing. I learned an amazing technique where you draw out your schedule using stick figures. (trust me you don't have to be an artist and you get better as you do it). I also have been able to work closely with a wonderful SLP who uses this technique. You can also get PECS off the internet, but I find the drawing to be more effective and in the long run easier as it can cover every possible situation.
The goal is to get her to follow the scedule with minimal asistance from you. (it takes a lot of work to get to this point but is great if you can get there).
I understand you are homeschooling, and I know you may not plan to put her into school. I would suggest looking into what they offer in terms of special ed for kids like your daughter. I have been amazed and very pleased with what there is available at my sons school especially when he was very young. There are some amazing special ed teachers who will help in guiding you on how to get your child to learn to do these things. Each child's SN is different and knowing how to meet all of them is not something any one can know how to do. Especially for younger kids I think special ed can be amazing.
She sounds just like my 2 year old! And we also homeschool...
So, when I want a few minutes just to sit and think to myself when no one else needs me, I let him play in the bath and I sit ont he floor outside the bathroom, door open, and surf the web, knit, lesson plans, whatever. keep an eye on him and do other things. Crayons for drawing ont he walls, bath foam,etc.
Also, again, for you to have osme time to yourself, OR to help ne child with some work... have the other child take care of her. 15-30 minute intervals of doing whatever she wants that is acceptable. With two older sons that can be almost an hour of time that is schedualed away from you towards whatever you need, possible helping the other cild with work...
Is she interested at all in audio books or music that you don't have to sing? Or maybe videos that have music and sing along types things with pictures and music...
Dough. Make some tortilla dough or something like that and let her pound it and roll it and do whatever else to it for a while. This could also be something one of the older children helps with while you take a break or help someone else.
Just some thoughts. Good for me to take some time and think about this too.
Great responses!!! Schedules. Videos. Safe places. It seems like the comment about her not knowing how to self-entertain well is pretty accurate. That and she's really good at trying to get what she wants. Jordan is overly good at self-activity... only, they aren't appropriate either. Finding activities for our kids to do on their own is hard! I'm trying to spend a little bit of time with Jordan every day (maybe only 15 minutes?) where I play with him... helping him to learn appropriate things to do. Not sure if it's working, but I'll keep at it!
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