David Weekly, #50

It's been a good week for David this week. We had a fight in the car because he found a "Target" receipt, and was sounding out the letters. When he got to the "G", he said, "juh" instead of "guh", and it took a while before I could convince him that it was a hard G, like in "girl" ... I told him that some letters say more than one thing, the same way that "tissue" and "kleenex" describe the same object, which he seemed to accept. He wasn't able to put the sounds together to make the word, though. I've also taught him a letter combination, "ar", like, "car", which is different from "a" saying the same sound as "apple" and then the "r" saying "rrrr" all by itself. So he knows when he sees "ar" it makes its own sound. Later in the week I was wearing my "St. Louis" shirt, and I helped him sound out "St. Louis" and then he was able to put it together. And was thoroughly unimpressed with himself for having done it. I was, and gave him a high 5 for it...When I read to him, I try to get him to learn the "sight words," such as "the" or "a." He's slowly getting them.

David is a fan of the Barenaked Ladies, who put out a children's album called "Snacktime!" There are a few songs he really likes. One of these songs is called "7 8 9" which is a play on words: "six is afraid of seven, cause seven ate nine." I even overheard David singing this song to himself one day, including the way the notes dip into the lower register when the singer says "seven ate nine." He also likes the "Eraser" song, because I'll finger spell the word as they sing it, because they draw out the word "eeeeeee-rrr-aaa-sss-er..." Another song he likes is "Popcorn" because it's just pop pop pop, ad infinitum until the end of the song. Kinda like popcorn popping.

The park, and the other park. Today we went to the green park, and went on the big slide. He absolutely insists that he's a "big boy." I mention this because he always wants me to talk into the slide (the slide is a big tube), and I usually say, "the little boy is going up the steps" and he corrects me, every time! I say some other stuff, into the slide...he loves that. We went to the park a lot this week. But today we went to two different parks. He says, "Let's go home" from the green park. But on our way home, he realizes where he is and has me go the other park, too. He almost was able to give me directions. At this other park, though, I watched him socialize, as there were many more kids there. He was about the youngest kid, which made it difficult for him. There was a little girl he wanted to have play with him, but she wouldn't, and he started to cry, saying, "She's running away from me!" So I tell him to ask her to play with him, and does, and she says "no," which made him cry again. So I told him that he's not at the park to play with her, and to ask someone else to play with him. He did do this. At first, it was a pair of older boys (6 and 7, I think is what their mothers said), and he just kind of imitated what they were doing, and following them around. He had fun for a while, until he figured out that they weren't really interacting with him, not directly anyway. So I steered him to a couple of smaller kids, and again coached him on asking, "can you play?" This worked! So he played with another little boy (who was very similar to David in looks, to the degree that the little girl who had rejected him earlier asked if they were twins) for a while, going up and down the slide, until the other boy got tired of the slide. David asked this other boy to play with him again, because the boy had walked away, and they went back to slide again for a little while, until the little boy walked away again, and this time said "no" to David. David didn't handle this rejection very well, because he cried again. I told him that you can't expect people to play with you all the time as long as you want. He seemed to accept this.

Another detail that I think is worth sharing is about another little family. A couple of weeks ago we had been to this park, and there's a woman pregnant, and has two other boys that are pretty rambunctious and rough. One of the two is about David's age, or maybe a bit younger, but he's still pretty rough. They were going up and down the slide, but David almost got pushed off the ladder a couple of times by this other little boy. I intervened as I usually do when there's a lack of supervision by anyone else, and David is in some kind possibility of getting hurt. Well, this week, when we were there, this woman was actually coaching/teaching her children about how to play with the other kids, how not to be rude, how to cooperate, all kinds of stuff. I was very happy to see this. I'm sure it will be good for David, too, because I imagine we'll be seeing these people again, just by going to the park.

He's still figuring out finger spelling, because as he is trying to spell something out, like zoo, I'll see his fingers making the letters as he says them out loud. At various other points, he'll just randomly ask me what "this letter" is, and he shows me with his hand. At one point we were doing something and his hand made a letter X by mistake, which he saw, and pointed out to me. He doesn't know all the letters by themselves, yet. He knows them by sequence, but it's not the same.

He can do the computer now, too...he knows which icon to push to look at pictures, and he typically will pull up pictures of his mom. Yeah, he knows how to do that. I don't think I taught him this directly, but he's figured it out on his own...

Last thing for this week: he's begun to tell me he has dreams. What I don't know is if this is true. He told me about a picnic, and something in his dream that was white, or it was white in his dream. I wasn't able to follow all the details, and I'm skeptical of this, though. I have no idea when a person is aware of their dreams, or if David's old enough to know what a dream is, much less be able to tell me about it. It's worth reporting, though.

So that's a pretty good week. I'm hoping your week includes some dreams, and some learning.

Rusty