November 2011 Updates:

Bitter Sweet Times – Term 4

Hahgoot enjoyed a special lolly pop, from her friend Olivia who came back from

touring the world (including Disneyland)

Term 4 was a rollercoaster of emotions: on the one hand,

Hahgoot was the most settled in class, did exceptionally well academically and was a real

social butterfly, always surrounded by friends.

On the other hand, it dawned on her suddenly that we are moving house and she got extremely angry and very emotional. Her behaviour

became very clingy, erratic and even quite violent,

especially at home.

Here Alma is enjoying a game of “ring-a-roses” with

Hahgoot and her classmates Charlotte and Jaycie

The wild weather, changing abruptly from cold, windy and rainy, to hot, sticky and rainy, didn’t help with Hahgoot’s mood swings and confused state of loss. On nice days Hahgoot wore a helmet

when riding her scooter with Lily, as now she rides in a considerable speed.

At school Hahgoot enjoyed another fun concert and kept on writing enthusiastically in “Mrs Di

Donato’s mystery notebook” (top left, sketches for a machine that will do her

weaving homework for her)

Hahgoot got exempt from class readers as she has been reading books for Year 3 students.

She was thrilled when the librarian, Mrs Young, allowed her to take two chapter books home!

Hahgoot was so engrossed with her school life that she even made flash cards and taught her dolls to read! Woof-woof the dog needs extra practice...

Hahgoot made her own hat for the

school’s end of year hat parade in

December. She drew the design, chose the materials and got very little technical support

to make the hat.

The theme was flowers and bugs,

like the term’s topic.

Hahgoot LOVED this term’s topic, “Mini-beasts and Flowers” and obsessively counted each butterfly we saw on the way to and from school, and collected

every bug possible when she could.

She also followed the blooming of some roses in our front garden, so I can guarantee she was an A

student on this topic!

I went through a painful process myself this month of acceptance of the reality of Hahgoot’s issues and their permanence. I did an amazing two

weeks on-line course, “The traffic jam in my brain”, which was fantastic. The speaker, Geb Jereb, is fabulous, and you can press here to see one of her

popular kids’ songs or if you are curious, press here to view the first 10 minutes of this course, that made me laugh, cry and understand a lot more.

Also beneficial were the two books on the right: “The challenging child” by Dr Greenspan was both reassuring and useful and “No more meltdowns” was

especially helpful for giving Barak tools to understand Hahgoot’s behaviour.

As part of the process of calming Hahgoot down and

helping her deal with the immanent move, we made together “correspondence

packs” for 5 of her best friends. Each included a

set of paper and envelopes with matching stickers, a

special coloured pen and a letter Hahgoot wrote.

She wrote them all exactly the same, which is very significant as Hahgoot doesn’t like repetition.

Hahgoot’s lovely teacher, Mrs Di Donato, was very supportive and told Hahgoot she could write her from the new school and tell her all the news, and include a photo in her new uniform.

Hahgoot was very excited about this and sat down to write right away... She also made a pun at the end of the letter using

pictures, about the name “Emu Plains\planes”...

As Hahgoot was very angry her meltdowns worsened, and she even had two very difficult sessions with Carly, where I had to spend most of the session wrestling her back out of a meltdown. Carly was very worried that their relationship

got damaged, but I decided we are not giving up now.

I got Hahgoot a book called “Why does Izzy cover her ears?” about a girl with similar sensory sensitivities to

hers (left) and discussed it with her.

Carly gave Hahgoot a kazoo to practice her breathing, and Alma loves it too!

Hahgoot needs to sit in a bean bag while blowing to support her rib cage.

Hahgoot has been starting to be more aware of her emotional state at different times after we started using the ALERT program (also known as “How does your engine run?”, you can read about it here) and even started to suggest ways to calm herself down before bedtime (usually our toughest time of the day), like asking to

write down all the words that are cluttering her brain (on left). After she wrote them

she said she feels better “now that I released them onto the page”.

Another book I got for Hahgoot was “Squirmy Wormy: How I Learned to Help Myself”, which is a book about an Autistic boy with sensory problems that does all kinds of activities to help

himself cope with his issues.

The best aspect of this book was that it opened up a conversation about how Hahgoot can take control over her issues and how much she already does and can do to help

herself (I think self empowerment is extremely important, and has to start early on, as I am not able to forever help Hahgoot

with the infinite possibilities of things that will bother her sensory system’s balance). Hahgoot then sat down to write her own book, each night adding a pair of pages while wearing her

weighted vest to calm her system down before bedtime.

This was all Hahgoot’s design and ideas, following roughly the format of the original book.

I liked it that she chose to put her fear of balloons on the title page, this is certainly the place where we all started to wonder if her

problems where common or had some deeper underlying problem.

This is a fairly accurate description of a morning in our house...

The solution is that I take Alma out of the room as soon as possible and

Hahgoot gets extra time and quiet to get herself up slowly.

Here Hahgoot drew herself writing all the words that were cluttering her brain

(she was so proud of herself that she came up with that solution a couple of days earlier)

What Hahgoot calls “tired” is actually a state of low arousal or low energy (that’s a

good drawing of how her body slumps).

Her solution is to wrestle with me (which is what we do to get her energy up again),

but interestingly she chose to draw me throwing pillows at her while in reality we actually do very close contact wresting on

all fours on the floor.

The last page was about a very traumatic incident that happened this month, and you’ll read about it shortly. Hahgoot got bit by a dog

and we discussed at length how she did everything right (slowed down her scooter

when the dog approached) but she couldn’t control the dog’s thoughts and choices.

Sometimes we do everything right and still get hurt, that’s the nature of accidents.

I came in to talk to Carly without Hahgoot and we devised an action plan to pull Hahgoot out of her black mood swings and anger issues.

Basically, we both had the same ideas, that we need to follow her fantasy world, where she is safe, and get back to basics with lots of gross motor; the rest will

come later when she is settled in her new reality.

So I talked to Hahgoot and told her she will be “tricking” Carly (who was in on the plan, of course, and played along). Instead of her Super-Hahgoot outfit she’ll

wear her bee costume and when Carly will come out to look for Super-Hahgoot, whom she missed because Hahgoot was away angry, Hahgoot will pop out and

try to sting her! As you can see, the plan worked like a charm and their relationship was restored. All I needed to do now was keep Alma busy with

costumes and crackers while Hahgoot was back into action.

Here Hahgoot and Carly are having a fabulous time trying to “walk” in the “magic feet” (trying to move and jump around the room inside the slippery Lycra swings)

Hahgoot is very hard to motivate to move but at least she was back into her giggly old self and Carly’s room was once again rated “best place to be after home”.

Now to our big drama of the month:On one of the Sundays I wanted to take the girls to the park in the morning to get them active in the pleasant sun. After two hours of morning procedure we managed to get out

of the house at last with the new helmet and scooter and in a relatively good mood.

Two streets away from the house a small cattle dog suddenly ran out of a house’s yard. Hahgoot slowed her scooter down (I was right behind her with the pram). The dog gave two barks and bit her ankle. It was very fast and there was no way I could stop the dog.

The dog’s owner, who chased the dog out when it escaped the yard, was more distressed than the two of us and quickly gave me her details. I called Barak and we

went home so he could drive us to Burwood to get medical attention.

To our relief, the bite was a very shallow scratch and didn’t require anything beyond antiseptic cream. It was a big trauma for Hahgoot (and myself, seeing it happen in front of me in a flash) and for the dog’s owner, who decided to put the dog down that day, as

it had a history of erratic behaviour and this attack was the last straw.

On the left and middle: before the dog’s attack, on the way to the park.

On the right: after visiting the doctor, recuperating with

mango ice cream in Burwood.

After the dog’s attack Hahgoot had her biggest meltdown ever, but it was 5 hours after the event following her dad opening the air condition, as she has a delay in processing emotions

and sensory information. Took me an hour of massive wresting to calm her down, but luckily I was highly trained

by now and knew what to do. It was still horrific to see her like this,

poor thing.

Just what we needed, a dog bite to a child with skin over

sensitivity...

I used Floortime techniques when playing with Hahgoot (here is some info on what this method is all about)

and it has helped with her general rigidity and negativity. On the left she is all smiles after a long play session, where at the end she was happy with turning the blocks into talking people but

at the beginning she wouldn’t even look at me.Her issues with food have increased during the month (the more

sensory issues the blander the food became) and as usual, it was near impossible to wake her up all month (though the music did help a bit, at least in calming her and blocking Alma’s noises).

And to make sure Hahgoot’s tough month was extra miserable, she also got Tonsillitis with high fever and a sore tummy, and spent

nearly a week at home, playing with Alma and working in bed on her workbooks.

It wasn’t all bad though:

Hahgoot found nice ways to amuse herself during afternoon tea (left) and also got very independent suddenly with making her

own toast, from toasting it to spreading Nutella.

In our next presentation:Hahgoot’s creative and social activities