2017-18 End of Year Assessment: Ladybug

Of all of the news to report about Ladybug--social, emotional, physical, academic, spiritual, artistic, etc.--right now, for us, the most important is that we're going ahead with directed therapy starting next week.  The therapist will start with a mix of play and directed therapy in order to establish a trusting relationship and slowly work her way to fully directed therapy.

I cannot adequately express how grateful I am for the 3 hour intake meeting Sir Walter Scott and I had with the therapist this week.  Mostly Sir Walter Scott listened, and I talked (that's kind of how it always is), and the therapist asked lots of questions.  The most important thing she said was, "I believe you."

And then she said, "These are serious issues.  Do you think [Ladybug] needs an alternative placement?"

Not yet.

But just having a professional ask that question validated all of the hour-by-hour, minute-by-minute struggles we're having, and helped Sir Walter Scott and I both realize Ladybug does need to stay with us.  Somehow opening the door to alternative placement helped cement her place in our home.

For now.

Ladybug is a danger to other children.  We have to spend all day maintaining boundaries that will keep the rest of our children--and other children--safe.  She has begun (or perhaps is continuing) to roam the house at night, so now we are working on ways to keep the other children safe at night as well.

This past school year was Ladybug's First Grade year.

Physical Development
When Ladybug arrived in our home nearly 3 years ago, she was at the bottom of the growth chart for her age.  She was nearly 5 years old, and she wore a size 3T.  She is now 7 1/2 years old, and she's wearing a size 7/8.  That's a lot of growing!  She's still petite--quite slim--but she's far closer to average size than she used to be.

She's experiencing signs of premature puberty.  We're completely matter-of-fact about it; we've explained that some of these changes are happening earlier to her than they are happening to other children, and the only thing to do is take care of herself, so she washes herself well and wears deodorant happily.  We answer her questions about the developments as she asks them, doing our best to answer honestly and simply.

Beautiful mud art by Nature Angel.  Beautiful model--Ladybug.

Her asthma symptoms disappeared completely over the fall, winter, and spring--this past winter they weren't even triggered by a couple of different colds she got.  However, in the heat and humidity of the summer, she is needing daily treatment to keep her lungs clear.  She is not needing her emergency inhaler at all, though.

Ladybug struggles with foot ailments-- in her skin, her nails, the soles of her feet.  After much trial and error we've established a routine of foot care that is successfully clearing her feet of most of the problems--it includes a lot of vinegar.  At this point it looks like the remaining issues with her nails will require constant care.

Her eczema seems to be completely gone.  She has not had a flare-up for over a year.

She is strong and coordinated.  She can do headstands, handstands, cartwheels, and she's pretty close to being able to do handsprings.  We are often asked about enrolling her in gymnastics, but I do not want her to be a part of the world of competitive gymnastics.  I am pondering trampoline classes, climbing clubs, or diving teams, but still, she's only 7 and fragile.  I want her to have successes that help her realize her potential, but I don't want to damage her with competition and pressure that are inappropriate for her age and physical development.

Ladybug is missing 2 of her permanent teeth; they never formed and will never grow in.  She will need extensive orthodontic care.  She chose--completely of her own volition--to stop sucking her thumb in preparation for the work to begin, but when we had some conflicts with the orthodontic support staff and we began casting about for a different group in whom we could place our trust, the delay seemed to her to be a breach of trust--even though we kept her apprised of our actions--and she's sucking her thumb again.  We've discussed this issue with her, and even though she knows we know, she still tries to keep it secret.  Her orthodontic care is on hold until she's ready.

Social Development
She's petite, quiet, and darling--adults love her on sight.  She's praised for her good manners, for her kindness, for her generosity.  And she is deserving of such praise.  At home we make a point of praising her for these same qualities.

Ladybug makes friends with other children.  She is not afraid to ask, "Do you want to play with me?" and as such she always has someone to play with.  She needs a large social group because she cheats at all games (even cooperative games), and kids get tired of it.  When one child refuses to play with her anymore, she turns to another child and then another, working her way through all available playmates.  Generally speaking, kids are forgiving, and by the time she's run through her list of playmates, the first one is willing to give it another go.

Because of her behaviors all of her play must be in a public room of the house or a truly public place, and I (or another responsible caregiver) must be able to have visual contact at all times and periodic auditory contact as well. 

She gives gifts constantly.  She spends much time every week wrapping various possessions in notepaper and offering them as presents to family and friends.  She also shares of herself--offering to read stories to younger kids and asking if she can help with various chores.

She is very aware of being black in a mostly white family, and she seeks out other black children and other black adults.  It is a tremendous blessing that we live in a predominantly black community, so she has plenty of opportunity to associate with "people who look like me" at church, at parks, at the library, at the grocery store, and slowly-but-surely at homeschool events . . . and of course, at home. :)

Even though she was not yet 5 years old, and her baby sister was only 7 months old at the time they came to live with us, she must have been parentified to some degree.  Even 3 years later, she competes with me for Lola's affection and caregiving (though I won't join the competition).  Ladybug is not allowed to spend unsupervised time with Lola, and she is daily trying to circumvent this rule in order to get and keep Lola to herself.  She asks Lola constantly, "Am I your best friend?"  Sometimes she's rewarded with the answer she wants, but mostly Lola says, "No, [Baymax] is my bes' fwend!"  This is hard on Ladybug. 

Academic Development
Ladybug loves learning.  She is fierce in her determination to learn and do.  She is very motivated by competition--looking about constantly to see what other children can do and then working to either keep up with or surpass what she sees.

However, for Ladybug, learning is hard work, and sometimes her brain won't let her keep up with what her heart desires.  She often asks, "How come I can't ____________ like ___________?"  Mostly I try to brightly answer, "You will when you're ready!" or "Because you're you!  You're your own special person with your own set of gifts and talents.  You don't need to be like ________!"

I don't know how much of this she believes.

I do know she can persevere with the best of them!

 *Language Arts
I administered a couple of free online reading assessments.  Both of them returned discouraging results, and both of them focused on Ladybug's weaknesses rather than her strengths.  Ladybug has very poor decoding skills, but she has an amazing ability to gather contextual clues to make meaning.  So, as first grade reading assessments focus almost completely on phonemic awareness, Ladybug failed utterly. 

She can read, though!

Ladybug is the exact kid for whom the whole language learning movement was created.  She figures out words in context and makes meaning from the whole.  Give her a word family list, and she'll have to sound out each word independently--even one as simple as:
CAT
PAT
BAT
SAT
RAT.

It's excruciating.

On the other hand, if she's presented with:

I made myself a snowball
As perfect as could be.
I thought I'd keep it as a pet
And let it sleep with me.

Source: https://www.familyfriendpoems.com/poems/famous/children/

I made myself a snowball
As perfect as could be.
I thought I'd keep it as a pet
And let it sleep with me.

Source: https://www.familyfriendpoems.com/poems/famous/children/

"I made myself a snowball
As perfect as could be.
I thought I'd keep it as a pet
And let it sleep with me."   
(from "Snowball" by Shel Silverstein)

She can read it quite comfortably--only needing a bit of help with "perfect" and "thought."

So, working to her strengths, this past school year we played word memorizing games to increase her fluency with common sight words and practiced reading with poetry and fairy tales that allowed her to work from a place of familiarity.  She also finished (minus the spelling, which was too hard) The Good and the Beautiful Language Arts K course of study.

She pores over books and magazines constantly, reading what she can, asking questions about what she can't, and I've learned to answer her question, "What does this say?" by simply saying the word for her instead of asking her to sound it out.  If I give her the word, she'll store it away in her brain and bring it back when needed.  If I ask her to sound it out, it will be lost forever.

Her absolute, hands-down, no-contest, favorite books this year are Fancy Nancy stories.

As far as writing goes, she prints beautifully, and she began working on cursive this past school year.  She has lovely handwriting.  Signing her name in cursive is a true delight for her. :)  She does not try to write creatively (but this may be partially due to her limited access to writing implements).  Her ability to spell is not on par with her ability to read, but her challenges do correspond with how she reads.  She tries some invented spelling occasionally, and I can usually tell what she's tried to write.  (i.e. "vs is a bok" = This is a book.)  We worked on memorizing some basic sight words and practicing slow sounding out of CVC words, and thus far she's mastered "I, a, the, is, me, my" for sight words and the occasional CVC word--mostly in the -AT or -AM families.

She's eager to "catch up" with her younger brother for whom reading is a gift.  "May I read The Boxcar Children?"  or  "May I read Charlotte's Web?" are common questions.  Oh!  How she tries!!!  At this point, Frog and Toad are better reading companions, but I have no doubt that she'll be able to acquaint herself personally with Benny and Charlotte eventually.

*Mathematics
The language of numbers is is not Ladybug's native tongue.  I pull out some math; we try together; Ladybug falls apart; I put it away to rest for a season.  Repeat.

In the early part of this 2017-18 school year, I tried putting the math pages away and completely focusing on manipulatives.   That was a fail, too.

We let it rest--focusing on reading, cursive, nature outings, our special Advent school, and drawing lessons.  As winter came to a close, Ladybug was asking almost daily for math lessons, and then followed our very best success, when her ability to understand the concept of simple addition suddenly blossomed!

--She understands the concepts of "more than" and "less than." 
--She reads and writes 2 digit numbers correctly about half the time--the other half of the time, she reverses the digits.
--She cannot skip count.
--She knows the names of 2-D shapes but not their 3-D counterparts.
--She likes to play with coins and asks often about their various names and values, but she has not internalized their relationships.
--She does not understand very many units of time, but she does know the months of the year and the days of the week, and she understands the passing of time by attaching events to special events or routines (i.e.  "We will go to California after 3 more Sundays" or "It will be my birthday after the 4th of July and [Super Star's] birthday and [Little Princess's] birthday and we start school again" or "We will go to the park after lunch").  She also tries to tell time on both digital and analog clocks, and I feel reasonably sure that she will be able to do so eventually.
--Concepts of measurement lie beyond her grasp at this point, but through frequent water play this summer, it seems she is internalizing that the contents of smaller containers filled repeatedly will fill larger ones and that the contents of larger containers can be divided among several smaller ones.  She can correctly compare relative sizes.
--Her geometry knowledge is on par with preschool level skills.
--She loves patterns!  She makes patterns out of all kinds of things, and she likes identifying patterns.

Her awakening nearly coincided with the end of our school year, and she was really disappointed when I put the math workbook away.  Sometimes I worry that I broke her stride, but mostly I'm glad for the success and rest.  She should be truly hungry and ready to feast when we return to math lessons.

*History and Science
These subjects were covered in our Academy lessons.  Ladybug participated fully in these lessons, and she can narrate verbally or via drawing quite well. 

*Foreign Language
She's done no formal study, but she likes to watch our Whistlefritz (Spanish) and Signing Time  (ASL) DVDs.  She's learned the words for a few nouns in each language, and sometimes she tries to count.  The words blur together in her mind, and she often substitutes nonsense sounds that approximate words in Spanish or motions that approximate ASL words, but she's sure trying, and I think a nice little foundation is being laid for future study.

Artistic Development
Ladybug likes art, likes singing, likes dancing, likes expressing herself via the arts. 

She was a busy participant in our dance group, learning the dances and memorizing the songs with support. 

She sings almost constantly. 

One day recently, she'd been singing at the top of her lungs for a long time--long enough that I was quietly muttering, "There's no harm in her singing.  Just let it go.  There's no harm in her singing.  It's good for her."  Eventually Super Star came out of the music room to ask Ladybug to be quiet for a time because she couldn't concentrate.  Ladybug complied--sort of.  She did quiet down, but she kept up a running patter of music lyrics in a low tone.  This went on long enough that I was again muttering to myself that she was doing no harm and to keep my cool when she turned to me saying, "I'm tired of not getting to sing, when can I sing again?"

I was incredulous.

To my mind she'd never stopped.

Ladybug loves handwork.  She does not get to engage in it often as it takes constant supervision, but when she does, it is immensely satisfying for her.

She puts on ballet shoes and a leotard several times a week to play at being a ballerina, and she is thrilled beyond words to get to take a 4 day ballet class at homeschool summer co-op in a few weeks.

My favorite depiction of the Nativity--by Ladybug

She pays lots and lots of attention to our drawing lessons.  She internalizes what is taught very quickly, and I see artistic potential in her work.  I wish I could trust her with paper and drawing implements because I think she could really shine.  As it is, though, she can only draw when directly supervised and my eyes can be 100% on her--I can't keep up with the damage otherwise.

Spiritual Development
Ladybug is trying to understand agency, obedience, repentance, and forgiveness.  These are big, hard concepts for a small girl, and they are not concrete enough for Ladybug to grasp. 

But I do see her trying.

--She memorizes scriptures with the family. 
--She prays sometimes wholeheartedly and sometimes with no intent at all (that's probably true for most of us). 
--She will act as if she is utterly amoral and then suddenly burst into tears sobbing, "I'm a bad person.  God cannot love me!"  There are not words to describe our mutual anguish as we sit on her bedroom floor trying to work through feelings of anger (me), worthlessness (her), hurt (both of us), and find a place of forgiveness and peace.
--She cares about preparing for baptism.
--She wants to study the scriptures.
--She wants to trust God . . . but that is going to take a lot of healing and growing . . . I hope and pray she'll get there . . . someday . . .