I’ve realized that recently we haven’t been working on signing with Maria as much as we should. Now that she is seeing better, it would be a good time to push some of the simple signs. So one night while feeding her chocolate pudding, which I figured would be a great motivator, I started working on “more” with her. I’d do it, then move her hands, then give her a bite. After 3-4 bites, I started waiting for her to do it…and she did! Every bite she’d lift her hands off the tray and bring them together.
I mentioned this to Cathy, and she said the OT had observed the same thing just a couple of days before. She was working with Maria, then she and Cathy started talking and stopped paying attention to Maria for a couple of minutes. She said Maria very deliberately brought her hands up and signed “more” to get the OT to continue.
I tried it again the following night, and it was less obvious that she was doing it. The problem with using food as a motivator is that if she doesn’t sign, what do we do – starve her? Still, it would be good to incorporate the sign in her daily activities. Any time we are doing something she likes, stop and get her to sign “more” before we continue.
We’ve been trying to give Maria more finger foods like pieces of sweet potato to increase her independence. It’s tricky finding something that is firm enough not to be mushed in her grip, dry enough not to slip out of her hands, but with the calories and nutrition that make it worth it for her to bother. We have to give her small pieces since she is still inconsistant with chewing. Pretty much anything we give her that doesn’t dissolve naturally we have to assume will be swallowed whole. Like anything, the more we do it the better she gets at it.
She got her new AFOs this week. I’ll have to get a picture at some point. These are designed to reduce the chance she can hurt herself by squirming her foot around like she did before. We’ll have to ease into them again, since we have used the old ones almost not at all for the past couple of months. We are headed back to the goal of having them on all night and then for an hour or three during the day. I think it will be easier to find time to have them on during the day since I, at least, don’t lay her down on the floor as much since we have to take her glasses off when we do. I’m curious if it will stabilize her more since she’s still trying very hard to figure out this walking thing.
Tomorrow is Maria’s IEP meeting. The nanny is supposed to get back today, which will be a big relief. Manolis is still miserable without Maria and has sworn he is never going back to Greece alone after this trip.