My son, Kai, is 6 years old and has special needs. He is developmentally about 2 years old. In addition to all of the challenges that he faces in all developmental areas, Kai has become uncooperative when work of almost any kind is presented. He fusses, squirms, cries, turns sideways in his seat. He just wants to be on his tablet, all the time. While he is learning, reviewing and enjoying when using the tablet, he also needs to be doing work with hands on, concrete manipulatives. For those confused, concrete means something that you can touch and manipulatives are simply things that you can move about and work with using your hands.
Last year, several things happened at once that threw me off course when I worked with Kai at home. My husband became very ill, we were spending lots of time in the hospital and we didn’t have anyone locally to help us. Essentially, everything that I was doing at home with Kai stopped. My husband was so sick that he couldn’t get up off of the couch for several months and trips to the bathroom were a challenge. Thankfully, he is on a slow road to recovery now but it was a very scary time. We also ended up moving to the country, where we were closer to family who could help more.
This past summer, I was in recovery mode. It had been a hard twelve months, we finally had gotten settled in our new house and I needed to relax. So, Kai’s home activities continued to be put aside. I feel guilty. I feel like it was a disservice to him. But I just… couldn’t.
Now that my husband is more or less functioning, we have started working with Kai at home again. We are having the same rebellion he is showing at school. We have met with the school and put several changes into place to help get him back to being able to focus on his work. My husband recalled that lessons always go better when we love on him and play with him first. So today, we sat Kai at the table and did just that. He started fussing immediately when we sat down, presumably to work, but when we just loved on him and sang to him and used the vibrating back massager on his head and arms, he relaxed and enjoyed it. We did not attempt work. We are first trying to build good associations with the work area before we reintroduce that.
One of the hardest things for Kai is writing. He is not interested in it at all and hates doing hand over hand (assisted) writing with any kind of tool you could possibly think of from crayons to pencils to markers – hates it. But there is one place where Kai WILL do writing, hand over hand, with joy and enthusiasm. No struggle at all. That place is the bathtub.
Kai LOVES to use bathtub crayons and write on the side of the tub. I usually hold out two colors and say, “What color do you want?” And he’ll reach for the one he wants. Sometimes, in the past, I have asked him what color he wants without showing him any choices. He has said red, blue and a mangled version of the word yellow. Not consistently. But when he does that it is really exciting.
After he chooses, I put my hand over his and put his fingers in a tripod grasp (this is the way they taught you to hold a pencil in school). The hardest part for Kai is connecting the tip of the crayon to the side of the tub, so my hand keeps it there for him. Then we write his name on the side of the tub as I say out loud, “K… a… i… Kai. That’s you! That’s your name!” He gets all excited and smiles and wiggles around. We do it five times. Then I offer two new colors, he chooses and we do more. Each new thing gets a new color. We draw circles, left to right lines, up and down lines and triangles. Sometimes the shapes vary. Then at the end I give him a huge round of applause. We get a washcloth, wet it and I sing the Barney clean up song (clean up, clean up, everybody everywhere, clean up, clean up, everybody do your share) while Kai wipes away everything he just did. Sometimes I hold my hand on top of his. Sometimes he can do it himself. And that is Kai’s writing lesson.
The only place Kai will do this is in the bathtub, during a real bath.
You may be wondering how I figured out that this would work. It was a huge, long process. I figured it out by learning what DIDN’T work. What didn’t work was crayons, markers, colored pencils, regular pencils, pens, paintbrushes, chalk, colored paper, lined paper, drawing in a salt tray with a chopstick, forming letters with playdough, stamping, tracing with writing utencils, tracing with fingers, and probably a dozen more things that I can no longer remember trying. There wasn’t a whole lot left to try when I stumbled across bathtub crayons. Go figure.
There is something about the water. If your child loves water, they like any activity you do in the water better. If they hate water, forget it. This one’s not for your kid.
For now and the foreseeable future, we are back to writing during the bath. We will attempt the other methods we tried again as Kai is able to regulate himself more and as we work through this period where he is work averse. Even though it feels like he may never do his work again, I know this is a phase that we will get through and push past.
When something doesn’t work, don’t be afraid to try something else. You may not get the result you want on the first try, or, like me, on the 20th try. But you WILL find something that works if you keep trying. Be creative. Think outside the box. (In fact, you can lose the box, this gig is all about losing the box). You can do this.
In what ways have you been creative to solve a problem with your special needs child? Please share in the comments below.