Intentional Parents

We’re back from our trip to see family. We had basically three concerns with Hannah when we were facing this trip:

1. toilet training “on the road”
2. regression in her skill level
3. how or whether to continue our daily sessions “on the road”

God graciously took care of all three.

• She developed a fear of rest area toilets (which I guess I have too, if I’m honest) and wouldn’t use one. I was concerned because she had drunk a pretty good-sized glass of liquid from a restaurant drive-through. We kept stopping to give her another chance, and she kept freaking out. So we drove on and she “held it” until we reached the hotel that evening.
• This was our first lengthy trip away from her secure home environment and we wondered how many of her newly-acquired skills would “carry over” into a potentially stressful situation. She did quite well for the first half of the trip, and began regressing a little during the second half of the week. Of course, we were all getting tired by then, so we figured she had done pretty well.
• We took along just a few supplies that we used in our drills (and our “lifeline” notebook of records) and determined to just do what we could as the opportunities came along. We ended up being able to do one or two mini-sessions every day and had a lot of practice generalizing. Generalizing is the term for carrying over a drill from our formal session into everyday life in various situations. For example, before we left we had been working on labeling the different rooms in our house. The trip provided great practice labeling bedrooms, bathrooms, and kitchens that looked different from ours at home but were nonetheless still bedrooms, bathrooms, and kitchens.

Hannah continues to increase her connection to what is happening around her. She plays with her sisters more often. This week when our neighbor boy came over to play, he and one daughter were running through the house and Hannah was trailing after them with a big smile on her face.

The two areas of concern right now are (1) helping her “adjust her volume” so we can actually hear what she is saying (now that she talks to us some), and (2) helping her understand the difference between “yes” and “no” in response to a simple question. For example, “Is this a giraffe?” If I’m holding up the giraffe, she should say “yes,” but if I’m holding up Pooh she should say “No, that’s Pooh.” She’s getting terribly confused after 19 days of practicing it.

We are particularly counting on your prayers as we start tomorrow with the three older girls back to full-blown schoolwork. They are learning valuable lessons about self-sacrifice and compassion and responsibility during this season in our family’s life. Thank you for covering all of us with your prayers.

This afternoon we reached a small but significant milestone (in my eyes) in Hannah’s progress. I use a 2-inch three ring binder to keep track of all the programs and drills she works on, as well as her daily progress sheets. This afternoon I had to clean out that notebook because it was getting too full. I moved all the programs she has mastered to a different binder. What an answer to prayer that she has accomplished so many skills and come this far in twelve weeks! Thank you again and again for all your encouragement and prayers.

It was a blessing to witness one daughter’s help today. We had previously taught Hannah to say “I don’t know” when confronted with an unknown object. Now we are trying to expand that to “I don’t know. What is it?” in order to learn the name of the unknown object. I had been trying to prompt Hannah but she kept getting confused, thinking that I was asking her “What is it?” and she’d respond “I don’t know” again (ad infinitum). Today one daughter asked if she could help at all. (In the past the girls have helped me with labeling possession, learning to pretend, and other programs.) I explained how I was stuck and wondered if having Hannah’s sister give the prompts alongside her would help ease the confusion. She happily agreed, but I was hesitant whether she would know when to prompt and how to use inflection in her voice and all those other subtle things we work on. Her love for her little sister just radiated from her face as she knelt beside Hannah’s little chair and carefully and sensitively helped her extend that phrase. By the end of the ten trials Hannah said it by herself twice!

I guess it shouldn’t surprise me, for this same daughter has been a big catalyst (along with a nearby friend) in teaching Hannah her last name and address. They started with the numbers then added the street name little by little. I’ll often hear this daughter “drilling” Hannah in their room (in a nice way as they play), “What’s your name? What’s your last name? How old are you? When’s your birthday? What’s your address?”

For those of you who want more details, here is an update on specific skills:

• prepositions finally “clicked” around the 36th session of working on “on” and “under”; she now knows “on , under, in, behind, in front of”
• counting 1–4 finally clicked around the 56th session
• she did much better than I expected in identifying environment sounds
• we’ve started working on responding correctly to “yes” or “no” questions. Today we began with “Is this a ball (or whatever the object is)?” and prompted her to reply “yes.” She caught on pretty quickly, but when I held up a cup and asked “Is this a ball?” she looked at me quizzically so I prompted her “No; it’s a cup.” Well, when I said “no” she looked crestfallen because that’s what I say when she gives a wrong answer. We’ll have to think about this one . . .

Enough for now. We’d appreciate your prayers as we plan to travel to see extended family. I’ll need grace and wisdom to determine when and where and how to continue her learning and practice “on the road.”

Thank you for your continual prayers on Hannah’s behalf. We continue to be surrounded by God’s grace and strength. We’re into the less stressful stage of “routine” now (as opposed to everything being new and requiring extra brain cells and time).

God keeps giving encouragement along the way. I had skipped a couple of programs because I didn’t have the supplies I needed. Finally last week I ordered the materials through the Internet. When I got to the order confirmation screen at the end, the address of the company showed up. It’s in a town about 20 minutes north of us. That was an unexpected blessing. It’s also been an on-going blessing to discover all the supplies we do have from previous years of purchasing and gifts. (Thanks for all those Christmas and birthday presents over the past twelve years!)

As of today, Hannah has mastered all but three of the Beginning skills list. That’s about 40 skills she has acquired. She has also made a good start on the Intermediate skills list. Last week I compared the lesson plan for that particular day’s session with the lesson plan from her very first day.

That very first lesson consisted of making eye contact, learning how to point, obeying the instruction “stand up,” and imitating me when I tapped on the table. She got less than 50% on all four programs.

Her current lessons consist of

• identifying the missing item from a group of four
• identifying pictures and sorting them by category (animal, instruments, food)
• counting
• matching and labeling lowercase letters with uppercase letters
• labeling a described object that is out of view (I’m thinking of an animal that . . .)
• labeling and identifying prepositions (on, under)
• imitating a five-block structure that was built behind a screen; she sees the finished product and has to duplicate it (she mastered this one yesterday, 100% on 10 tries)
• using simple sentences (I see a . . .; I have a . . .)
• describing a picture using a complete sentence
• singing and doing the actions with me to “Itsy Bitsy Spider”
• playing the Memory Game with four matches (instead of all six)
• identifying pronouns (my, your)
• saying “I don’t know” when asked to label an unknown object

In addition, one of her sisters is on a mission to teach Hannah her address and phone number. So far she can answer the questions:

• What’s your name?
• What’s your last name?
• How old are you?
• How are you feeling?
• What is your address? (She recites the numbers; we’ll work on the street name next.)

When I look ahead to the Advanced skills list, I hesitate and wonder how she will ever do those things. But then I remember looking at the Intermediate list and thinking the same thing about the skills that she is doing now. All glory to God for His grace!

Oh yes, one last thing. Last week we went picking blueberries. Hannah filled about 1/3 of a gallon bucket by herself, sorting out the white berries from the blue ones all the while. As one dear friend has observed, she seems happier now than she ever has. Something has changed about her countenance. Does she still struggle? Oh yes! Many times! But she seems to be enjoying what she has discovered about the life she was formerly distant from.

We rely heavily upon your prayers and encouragement. There is always that nagging thought present: “What if she hits a brick wall and can’t go any farther?”

Once again we are grateful for the Lord’s choosing to work through your prayers.

This morning Hannah got 100% on counting 1 and 2

and

she got 100% on labeling “man” and “woman,” and this was her first try at it!

You are all a valuable part of our team. Thanks!

(1) Hannah is now saying “Hello”! Thanks for your prayers specifically for that. (2) We are also thankful that, after much hard work and perseverance, she is daytime toilet trained. That required a new approach from the other girls because she didn’t share the usual motivation (“be a big girl”) or learning by observing and figuring things out on her own. We are once again thankful for the resources God brought our way and designed to cross our paths at just the right time.

We are excited to see her little personality beginning to blossom!

Currently we are working on –

• identifying and labeling gender (boy, girl, man, woman) (Like I said, she doesn’t pick things up readily by observing her surroundings as most children do.)
• counting: she’s got 1 down and almost has 2 learned (this is after 28 days of work)
• differentiating between “my” and “your”
• identifying prepositions: she’s really struggling with “under” for some reason
• imitating mouth movements like smiling; we have to teach her to smile back when smiled at; it doesn’t come naturally
• she knows her upper case letters, so now we’re starting on lower case
• labeling possession (“Mommy’s foot”) and labeling actions in others and herself (“she’s waving”)

Sunday was the first day that she paid close attention to what was going on up front in the church service. That was encouraging! Usually she does her own little thing in her chair and plays with her sister’s hair. Now it might have helped that we had the Manhattan Grace Tabernacle choir there . . . we’ll see next Sunday

God has been pleased to honor your prayers and encourage our hearts:

Hannah sang Jesus Loves Me this morning!

Thank you for standing with us. Please join us in thanking the Father!

Thanks for all of your encouraging e-mails and — most of all — prayers following our rough week. God graciously restored Hannah to where she had been before the fever episodes and we have taken off from there. The progress is not as quick as the first few weeks were, but we figure it’s because now we’re getting to the skills that she doesn’t know. In some ways it seems like we’re slowing down (when we’ve been trying 20 times to get her to count one to four objects) but when we stop and look at how far she’s come in six weeks (yes, we’ve been at this for six weeks now) we can only be grateful. Here’s a quick summary of her progress through the six weeks.

Week 1

• started to make eye contact
• began to learn how to point to desired objects

Week 2

• learned to wave bye-bye
• would not verbally label objects (big-time meltdown!)

Week 3

• learned to nod head for “yes” (using her hands on either side of her head since we would place our hands there to move her head while learning)
• would point to requested pictures in a book (and sometimes inadvertently label them, but never when asked to do so)
• we discovered that she could identify objects by function (lay several objects on a table and ask “what do you use to stir?”; see if she would point to the spoon, for example)

Week 4

• we discovered that she could identify (by pointing) numbers 1–10 when asked
• we discovered that she knew her colors and shapes and letters
• still would not verbally label objects when asked to
• we discovered that she knew possession (point to Mommy’s shoe, where are Daddy’s eyes)
• finally accomplished imitating gross (large) muscle actions (clap hands, tap legs, knock on door, etc.)
• discovered that she knew the names of the rooms in the house
• discovered that she knew what emotions pictures were illustrating (happy, sad faces)

Week 5

• she started to say “yes, please” while nodding her head!
• she verbally requested one object!
• she had the fever episodes and melt-down and wouldn’t nod, or say “yes please,” or label anything for several days

Week 6

• started back slowly for a couple of days
• by Wednesday she verbally requested 6 objects
• started verbally labeling familiar people from photographs (The Spirit brought the “magic cue” to mind during this session. It has always seemed that Hannah can’t pull the word she wants from mid-air, but this verbal cue is like giving her the end of the string and she can then pull down the word she wants. Here’s an example of the cue: Show her a picture of herself and asked “Who’s this?” Wait 2 seconds. If she gets frustrated and can’t think of the word, say “That’s  . . .” and she finishes the sentence with “Hannah!” We have since started implementing this cue (“that’s . . .” or “Hannah wants . . .”) in other situations and it has increased her verbal skills tremendously. Sometimes she will state the whole sentence without the cue!)
• verbally labeled body parts
• can identify attributes (hot/cold, big/little, etc.) and is labeling some of them
• is saying “bye-bye, (person’s name)” sometimes without prompting
• learned to answer the two social questions “What’s your name?” (“Hannah!”) and “How old are you?” (“Four!”)

Today

• began working on “hello” but we’re meeting with resistance; there’s some blockage there; please pray for this next breakthrough

God is so faithful! We started with four drills per session; today we were able to do twelve drills in two sessions with no melt-downs. She is working hard and is always sitting in her little chair ready for more when each session ends. Thank you, thank you for upholding her before the Father’s throne! Please pray specifically for her little spirit. I haven’t heard her sing a Jesus-related song in several weeks now and don’t know what to make of it. She listens to Bible songs and praise and worship songs every day at nap and bedtimes and used to sing “Jesus Loves Me,” but that has stopped. We want to be very careful that in the battle for her mind we don’t overlook the battle for her soul.

The last week has been a bit rough for Hannah (and all of us). She was tooling right along, making progress with her speaking, when she hit a brick wall on Saturday morning. She had a complete “meltdown” when we were working on one of her drills and seemed to have forgotten many things she had learned over the last month; i.e., pointing, nodding her head for “yes,” —some basic skills she had mastered. John noticed that her eyes looked tired around lunchtime, and sure enough, she woke up from her sleep Saturday night drenched in sweat with a high fever. We got her in a tepid bath to bring the fever down for that night, but the high temperature continued throughout Sunday. She basically spent the whole day lying on my lap. About late afternoon, she started cooling down but was pretty worn out. Then Monday and Tuesday she was battling diarrhea. Whatever hit her, her body is trying desperately to get rid of it!

We did manage to do a few drills today (Wednesday), but she tired easily. Thankfully, her pointing and nodding her head, and even the speech she had gained (“yes, please” and labeling some items by name when she wants them) has returned. Now we just need wisdom as we ease back to full speed.

After much prayer and counsel, we have decided to contact our county school system to take advantage of the free speech therapy they offer. (We figure we’ll use some of that tax money we’ve been sending in to them for years.) In order to get on the waiting list for an evaluation, we needed to get a vision, hearing, and dental screening done. That took place on Tuesday and I got the rest of the required documentation sent off today. So now we take our place behind the other 82 families on the waiting list. Please pray for peace and discernment as the process unfolds.

Thank you for joining with us to hold Hannah up before the Throne of grace. God is gracious and merciful, and Hannah can be in no better hands than His.

This week has continued with ups and downs. We’re finding out how smart Hannah is—and how resistant to attempts to challenge her. She called John “Daddy” for the first time yesterday, so he’s pumped God has continued to surround us with resources, people, grace, and strength at the moments we need them.

Thanks so much for your prayers. They keep us going. Please pray specifically for a breakthrough in Hannah’s verbally responding to specific questions. She will sit with us and look at a book and name all kinds of things on the pages as long as we don’t ask “What’s this?” The moment we put that “pressure” on her, she clams up. Seems like there’s a dark hole in her mind that swallows up the words when she feels any kind of pressure. We’re slowly trying to work through that by giving verbal prompts, like the beginning sounds, to help her remember. Today she whispered the ending to “horse” when I gave her the beginning sounds (she put on the “s”). Baby steps. . .

Winter 2001 — Hannah is oblivious to her present and the photo session.

We are seeing what we consider exciting progress in Hannah this week. She is definitely increasing her eye contact with those around her and seems to be more “connected” to what’s going on. The girls are wonderful about reinforcing all through the day what Hannah and I work on in our morning sessions. She is beginning to use her pointer finger to indicate what she wants. That may not seem like much, but she’s never pointed to anything before and couldn’t do it on Monday.

God is graciously letting us see some of His plan unfolding. He moved us here to Atlanta — we thought because of work possibilities. But it seems that some of His plan was to put us 10 minutes from a wonderful church, 2 doors down from a mother of an autistic daughter who had the book we needed to start us on this journey with Hannah, and right next door to a lady who has a friend getting her masters degree in speech therapy with children with special needs. That friend arrived last night from Indiana to spend a week. During that time she will also be observing Hannah and helping us determine what her needs are.

All three facets have been developing over several years, and God orchestrated it to have them intersect our lives right now. This has been an encouraging week. God has answered your prayers for grace, wisdom, patience, and encouragement many times over. He is making it clear that if we commit the way to Him and trust in Him, He will make it happen.

Thanks for your faithful prayers. They have been evident this week!