Helping Children Recover from Brain Injury
It’s here! Today – the day we’ve been talking about for months now – is finally here. Joey started kindergarten. I haven’t gotten to see him yet to hear about it, but what I know from this picture tells me so much about what he thought about it.
Here is a summary of all the steps we took to get ready for today. We hope these ideas will help others on their journey for preparing their own children for school.
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I watch as Joey studies his screen. He keeps selecting the same incorrect button, but after knowing Joey awhile, I know he’s doing this because he’s determined to somehow get to the correct word. When I watch his errors, I realize he’s often selecting the word directly under the word he is trying to select.
For me, as an adult, this would be ridiculously frustrating. For Joey, it’s just a part of expressing himself. [Read more…]
As we finished up reading Pete the Cat’s, Rocking in my School Shoes, I stopped and looked at Joey. I could tell he was thinking hard about something. I told him this, and asked him to share what he was thinking about. He immediately went into his emotions page on his eye gaze device and said, “Brave.”
Brave.
He is thinking about being brave to go to kindergarten. [Read more…]
The stars managed to align perfectly, and just when Joey is getting ready to go to kindergarten… Mo Willem’s pigeon is also being sent off to school too. And he’s not happy about it.
About a month ago, I mentioned kindergarten to Joey and he started crying. It was hard to tell if he was crying from the topic, an uncomfortable chair positioning, or something else, but the type of cry and its relation to the sudden topic change made me wonder how Joey is feeling about his upcoming new routine. Going to kindergarten is a big deal, and Joey isn’t able to ask us questions, tell us his feelings, or even hide under his bed and tell us he isn’t coming out and is going to be home-schooled. (This may or may not be what my own five year old has said). [Read more…]
I was finally able to introduce Joey to my own five year old daughter. She had been begging to meet him for awhile. Joey lit up when he saw that I’d brought him a friend, and quickly found the words “Hi. My name is Joey. I live in Virginia” on his eye gaze device. When she buried her head into my back, not immediately replying in perfect response to his introduction, I whispered that she was shy. His eyes responded with understanding. It didn’t take him long before he repeated, “Shy. Shy” for emphasis. [Read more…]
