Special Hearts

For years I was forever jealous of any of my online friends who were involved in a great church.  We had been looking and looking, but to no avail.  Finally, we found a church that is now our home!  A church that loves and accepts both our daughter AND our son!  They have a Special Needs program where all the teachers are the best!  They love Ian completely no matter what…and that takes SO much stress off of me!

Last Sunday, after Church/Sunday School, my husband and I were talking to Ian’s teacher, Miss Wendy.  She was letting us know what they had talked about during Sunday School and other things that had happened the class.  Something caught my eye and I followed it…it was a red ball.

Now, this red ball is a big red ball that my kids just LOVE to hit, punch, or kick everywhere.  I start to go into panic mode – we were in between two buildings in a playground area, but there were windows on both sides of the playground.  Thankfully, all the other kids were either gone or inside, so no one else would get hurt from this giant red ball.  I called to my kids to “roll” the ball.  They knew the drill: sit down on the ground and roll the ball back and forth.

That worked … for all of two minutes!!!  Then back to the punching this giant red ball.  One near miss– and I do mean as near as near could be with out broken glass everywhere, and I was on them – again – to stop punching that Giant red ball.  So, down they sat again, this time one on a little grass hill and the other at the bottom.  Now obviously, in order for Ian to get this GIANT Red Ball up the hill, it took more than a “roll”, so it escalated really fast this time!!!
“Ian”, I spoke very seriously and rather loudly.  “Give me that Huge Gigantic Red Ball…NOW!”  The kids stopped.  While Tori walked back over to dad, Ian got that look on his face that told me I was in for a run for my money!!  You know that look: “Oh goodie…I finally have mom’s complete and total attention…now let’s play!”

Ian pulled back his arm with that Very Huge Gigantic Red Ball in it and aimed…right at me.  I knew better than to ignore this all too real threat – but I was at church.  What could I do?  I couldn’t scream at him like a maniac – ok, well, I could have but we all know what good that does!!!  So I did the next best thing: I turned my body sideways (less to hit) and gave him that “Don’t you even think about it” look that all mothers are born with.  It didn’t work - the twinkle was still there in his eyes. I spoke more sternly, “Ian…stop this.  Give me that Amazingly Huge, Very Gigantic Red Ball…right NOW!”  Maybe next time I should really think through my verbiage, because as we all know, our Special Kids are nothing if they are not literal.  Completely literal.  So … bless his little heart – he gave it to me…boy, did he give it to me.  With it whizzing towards my head, that ball was suddenly even more Amazingly Huge and more Very Gigantic than it had ever been before!  (first published 02-08)

 
Find Me:

How many times in my life have I seen an Amazingly Huge, Very Gigantic Red Ball whizzing towards me?  How many times did I just want to run and hide?  Sometimes when that Red Ball got closer, I realized that it was actually very small and I could deal with it no problem.  But what about those other times.  The times when it really was an Amazingly Huge, Very Gigantic Red Ball heading straight for my head.  How did I respond?  What did I say?  Who did I turn to?

Lord, help me to always turn to You, no matter what size the Red Ball is that is whizzing my way.  Show me how to respond like You would respond: with love and grace.  Give me the heart that it takes to be the woman and the mom that You want me to be.

A lot of us with Special Needs Kids have “Late Learners”.  Kids who are older, yet still learning to read.  I’ve got good news for you: Don’t give up, they can still learn to read!
While trying to teach Ian to read, I came to the heartbreaking reality that there really aren’t any good Supplements out there for older learners.  All the Supplements are geared toward younger kids and have lots of graphics and big chunky drawings all over them.  Well, we know for our kids, we need little to no graphics and older, more mature looking Supplements in order for our kids to want to use them.
So, I got busy and researched and tested.  My poor son had so many different designs and “here, try this … do you like it?  Will you use it?” thrown at him, but in the end, he loved using his own Big Kid Supplements.  And what’s better – they were fun, easy and they worked!
Ian’s favorite and therefore the first of the Supplements we produced are the Word Fans.  The Word Fans consists of 30 Word Family endings that can make over 100 different words!  To start out, you print and cut out the fans and connect with a brad.  Personally, I made one fan for every Word Family and put them all in a plastic bag.  At first, I put them in five different bags (a, e, i, o, u).  But as Ian got better and better at making real words, I put them all in one bag and he got to pick out several Word Fans for that days “Fun Time”.
These Fans are very versatile.  As your child gets older, you can add other consonants that might or might not make a word in that word family.  Another thing we did was to take one of each of the consonants and each of the “a” Word Families and secure them all into one fan.  Then your child can make any kind of word or create a “non-word”.  That, of course opens up another avenue to teach about words and “non-words”.
So after lots of trial and error, we present the first of many Big Kid Supplements.

Over this past weekend, I represented my friends company at a local convention.  It was really slow, but the people I did get to met were wonderful! 
I went to give my Workshop and was amazed that there weren’t ANY people there.  That just does NOT happen!  I’m used to having anywhere from 40-50 people in my Workshops.  Finally one dear sweet lady walked in at 1:29pm, (the seminar started at 1:30pm).  After she sat down she told me that I should go and open my door and let the gal next door know that YES, I was in here.  “Excuse me?” I asked her.  She then informed me that the gal next door was standing in front of the doors (there was two doors side by side – one leading into my room and one leading into her room) and she was telling people “there’s no workshop in there” and “come into here to hear a wonderful workshop!”. 
My blood pressure jumped to an alarming rate.  I walked out there and opened my door and while I was putting that little door stop down (so that the door would stay open) this girl came up behind me and asked what I was doing.  I turned and saw defiance in her eyes and although every once of me wanted to blast her to China and back, I calmly said, “I’m teaching the Lapbooking Workshop in here”.  Although, I must admit, my first impulse was to walk right into her workshop and announce that there had been a mistake and that if you are interested in learning how to create a Lapbook, please feel free to exit through that door and into the room next; I realized that that was NOT the Godly thing to do.  So I humbly walked back into my room and tried to figure out how to adjust my workshop for 1.  I prayed and prayed and decided to make the best of it.  I had the makings for a Lapbook, I’ll just sit and we’ll make a Lapbook and she can take it home!  

As it turns out, there were about four other people who were running late, so I had a total of five people in a seminar that usually has about 40 – 50 people in it.  But I think that those five people had fun and learned a lot. 

I was extremely disappointed that something like this would happen at a Christian convention.  It turns out that the girl wasn’t the speaker of the seminar – however the speaker of the seminar was the only other vendor selling Lapbooks.  Ouch!  That Hurts.

(from 05-13-08)