Pixiemom

AnnaBeth has sensory issues. She doesn’t like the feel of certain foods in her mouth and she doesn’t like holding other people’s hands. Her teacher is having them form a ring with holding hands and she is slowly doing a little more each time before she breaks away from the ring. Also, they have a part in the recital piece that they hook their arms together and she kind of balked at that contact also. She will only do that with one other girl in her class, so her teacher is putting her on the end of the row next to her friend. At home, I’m working with her on this by playing Ring-a-round-a-rosie. I think it’s helping.

Next, she’s never really been a social person. In fact, before ballet, if there was more than 2 or 3 other kids around, she would usually find a quiet corner to play in. I couldn’t get her to go to TeamKid at church because she couldn’t handle all the kids in the class. She would always end up getting too upset and going to the nursery with Noelle. For the first 3 weeks of ballet, she sat to the side most of the time and wouldn’t participate. She would come home and practice all the things she’d seen the other kids do, but wouldn’t do them in class. On the fourth week, I wasn’t able to see how she did, but was ready to pull her out if it turned out to be too much for her at this age. Her teacher told me that there were a few missing that day and AnnaBeth did about half the activities. Since then, she slowly did more and more until she was doing everything. What helped me to know that she was really doing better with this was that these last two weeks, she has stayed in her TeamKid class.

Then there was her feet. All my girls have their toes pointing in. Ballet works the muscles so that her toes will point the correct way. I’ve seen improvement in Amie since she started last year and I’m seeing it in AnnaBeth as well.

Last, but not least, is her love of music. She has always had a love of music just as I have. The same is with Amie. All my kids enjoy and love music, but these two (and maybe Noelle) show a little more. They both have beautiful singing voices and sing exactly on tune which isn’t all that common for younger children. (My niece does this too.) They have shown a sense of rhythm as well. They’ve always moved to music whenever I had it on and I play it quite often. This is a way to enhance their music experience. I danced (clogging) when I was little and enjoyed it so much. I wish I could have done more, but chose gymnastics instead when we moved. Now, I’m learning as they do. It’s fun to share this with them.

The last few days, though I’ve kept up with putting the stuff on their nails, I haven’t seen any signs of them putting a single thumb or finger in their mouths. I’m going to continue doing it until the end of Febuary. Christine went 3 weeks once without sucking her thumb and then started up again, so I’m not going to stop this too soon.

Guess what? I’m going to probably still have most of this stuff left when I’m done. After one week with three girls and you can barely tell it’s even been used. One of my friends said that she chews her nails sometimes, so she might use some of it and then I might give what is left to Jill to let her use with Tabitha when she is ready for it.

I’ll be happy to see Amie with healthy thumb nails. It will be nice. Too bad I didn’t discover this stuff before she lost her baby teeth. Her front adult teeth have come in kind of crooked. The dentist said she’s going to need work done to correct it later.

I’ll update you all on this war on a weekly basis.