Homeschooling Laughter

I have always wanted to prove that we can do certain things. We can adopt. I love my adoptees as much as I love my bio children. And another thing I’ve wanted to prove? The voices were wrong.

I’ve had in laws, elderly cousins, parents telling me the children will be messed up. They won’t be able to function in the real world (because our world is fake?) One said I was destroying their future.

First of all, I wanted to inculcate in the children good principles and values that they would hopefully spread to others. I gave them all the knowledge of GOOD that I could, so they could discern the evil. And judging by this funny text between my daughter and I, I definitely did achieve that!

While they still hold their antiquated illogical views, we keep pressing on and laughing at the knowledge of evil she never got.

I have another happy moment. I truly believe that folinc acid is helping our girl open up. Yes, she’s still getting violent and hurting me. I had surgery on my calf muscle to remove a lipoma that was on it and a nerve and I’m going through torture. But she doesn’t care. Not that her twin and brothers do either. So she pulls me when I’m meant to keep my leg elevated. I went to get stitches removed but when one was removed by the nurse, my incision gaped open. Oops, too early for my body! So we have given it a few days.

But man! Though she now requires more supervision as she’s reduced how long her quiet time and tablet time are, she’s saying more too. She repeats a lot of what she hears. But also does more than before.

She doesn’t usually play with anyone. And if I got close, she would move away unless of course she was pulling me to get something for her. But today she pulled me to the garage, and played around and ran around while I watched, and then she made me sit on a soft ride on therapy toy, and she sat in front of me. Close proximity is NOT normal at all! I pretended we were riding on a train, and then she leaned backwards onto me. She rested on me. She hadn’t done that since before autism showed itself when she was around 18 months old! She’s six now! My heart was so full!

Later, she came to my bedroom with big brother faithfully following her. She jumped on my mini trampoline and I asked her if she wanted Bk to hold her hands and jump. Usually I hold her hands and do up and down movements matching her as if I am jumping too. She immediately looked at him and with her eyes and raised eyebrow, she fully communicated without needing to pull him, “Yes,” she did want big brother holding her hands while she jumped! I’m proud of her for finding a different way to communicate.

Our steps forward might never be major. We might never again have her call me Mommy. And so I faithfully celebrate the little moments. Like her looking at him for a the first time ever when I asked. “Where is Bk?”

This post was clearly a girl’s post. It’s truthfully because our ten year old boy seems to be regressing intellectually. We all see him understanding a bit less, misunderstanding, not hearing what he could hear before, acting like he’s losing social skills.. so I don’t have anything trivial it amazing to share.

But I can share his “going to occupational therapy” outfit worn on Tuesday. Note the ankle brace. Even the way he sprained his ankle was illogical. Not a normal fall. A fall doing something not even a five year old would do. Running (not sure how!) off a moving elliptical and twisting it as he tried to land on a therapy mattress. I can’t picture it. All I could see was the swollen and painful aftermath that saw him at the emergency department on crutches for a week and then the brace alone till Monday this coming week.

See? Nothing fun and trivial. It’s a bit worrying. Same with weird sticking out his tongue movements like he’s a down kiddie whose tongue is too big for his mouth, which it’s not. Hence it being weird. Anyway!

Let’s end there, shall we? My daughter certainly doesn’t feel deprived because she didn’t know who Ted Bundy was; homeschooling didn’t make her unable to be fearless and instead, she’s been group leader for many assignments, and she is aware that all of us are made in God’s image that nobody is inferior to her. And THAT, is a wonderful way to summarize the non academic part of her having been homeschooled.

She’s ok! I didn’t break her.😆