Working Tuesday

Tuesday

(Reconstructed after losing notes)

Was a really good working day for me. Sometimes it works so well. Basically, I had to work most of the day, which means I am in the living-room on the sofa with my laptop. I know from experience that the only way to make this work is to be really generous with my time as much as possible when F asks for things, unless her demands are unreasonable in either substance or form, an example of which would be screaming 'I want you to give me an elephant-ride, now!' and stamping her foot. Nothing like this happened, so we were fine. So the sort of things she did ask for from me were: food, drink, cuddles, help with toilet follow-up of various sorts, setting up the Media Centre or the puter for whatever media items she wanted, sticking things, cutting things, finding things. The main thing when I have a lot of work to do is not to get stressed and snappy. I didn't, I managed to be a smiling facilitator, a beneficent assistant and a cuddle-happy mum. If I hadn’t been, I wouldn’t have been able to get the work done anyway. I did tell her she’d have to wait a while sometimes, which she was fine with. It was a very companionable easy day – it’s getting easier all the time now. Anyway, I thought it was interesting to note the sheer range covered by F autonomously when amusing herself while I'm working for a whole day.

This is what she did, sadly not in chronological order, and probably not complete, due to loss of notes, but indicative nevertheless:

Threading beads (found thread, asked for help cutting and knotting, threaded beads)

Playing with ice (the day before, without me knowing, she had filled a toy teacup with water, put a tiddlywink in it and stuck it in the freezer, so on Tuesday she suddenly remembered it, went and got it out, asked for help turning it out onto a plate, then decided to experiment with ‘unfreezing’ it, using cold water and then warm water, discussed with me why the tiddlywink had appeared on the top of the ice-pie - because it had sunk to the bottom of the cup, speculated on what other objects might do, would they appear at the top or bottom, considered how we could experiment with that at a later date; then moved on to making small ice-lollies, her own idea, by filling ice-trays with juice and sticking straws in them, which we did and they were nice)

Watching films (Star Wars IV and VI - darkened the room by pulling curtains and shutting doors for cinema effect, chose which films to watch on Media Centre, commented on what was happening and what would happen next, what the characters did or didn’t know or might find out later; later, Barbie in the Princess and the Pauper – commented on the songs and how one of the voice actors sounds the same as the baddie in another of the Barbie films)

Bouncing (on sofa, vigorously)

Telling stories (acted some out as a sequence of ‘films’ a la George Lucas only her sequence was about 10 short films with the same characters and she moved around the living-room sometimes being a character, sometimes being a narrator, sometimes commenting on how the film would look more like a director/producer; also told other smaller stories throughout the day, with elaborate gestures at times)

Playing/Joking (trying to guess something nice that we might be going to eat in a while for a treat that began with ‘ch’, we started with chicken and cheese and ended with chimpanzees; she covered herself with a towel and pretended it was a monster that I had to tickle to get it to let go of her)

Having cuddles (whenever she wanted them, about 6 times during the day)

Making a Gloria the Hippo (she had already drawn and coloured a Gloria the Hippo of her own after getting very attached to the toy hippo at Buzz’s party on Saturday, so I helped her stick it onto card and cut it out)

Singing (a song from The Princess and the Pauper and 99 red balloons with me)

Aqua mat (asked for Aqua Mat, got her own water, I supplied a few different size brushes and a good clean mess was thoroughly made after initial drawing/painting with water)

Dusting! (used my big not-feather duster on a stick thing to dust me, the laptop, the doors, windows and quite a lot of the house)

So basically on a day like that I manage to work for anywhere between 5 and 30 minutes at a time between doing things for/with her. While I’m working I can still be conversing, answering questions, etc. (and surfing and chatting to people online too). It works really well for us now. The thing I've found is that it's always better to establish early on in the day that I am available and willing to help, that I'm not going to be snappy and horrible about helping, just because I have work to do. Then it usually pans out well.