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Sunday, June 1, 2014

A disability meets a duckling


We have 4 children with disabilities. Some days it seems to go smoothly, some days it doesn't.
Since Rose had her surgery, Lili has been filling in on the chore end, helping Tyler with calves and chickens, and she also has to fill up the silage cart with silage so the milkers can feed the cows.
The first 10 days, she did a FABULOUS job. The last 10 days, NOT SO GOOD!!
In fact, each day has had some sort of ISSUE with her chores.
Mostly, she is just lazy, and doesn't want to do much, but still, we always require a certain amount of chore help from all the children-it builds character:)
It seems that she has gone backward in comprehension, as well as desire, and almost looks for ways to be difficult. Dawdling would be a very KIND word to use-and I do have a purpose in all this, so bear with me!
We also had a set of ducklings born about a week ago, and we are so thrilled to see them waddling all over the yard with their mama.

Lili's cognitive impairment ranges quite a bit, as does Rose's, and so sometimes, we just get commplacent and forget that inside, there is a brain that wants to be independent. Most of the time, we see the total dependence on us for SO MUCH, like bathing, washing and doing hair, instructions in most daily tasks, issues with vocabulary, etc...and then there is a day when she tries something totally out of character, and we are flabbergasted.
Like trying to catch a duckling...and they DO NOT want to be caught-it is a real challenge for any of the bigs to catch one, so how she actually chased one down and was able to pick it up, we will never know.
All we know is the outcome was a squished, thrown down, dead duckling. And so now, instead of watching the mama hover around her 7 babies, she now has 6, and we were all quite sad.
And yes, Lili was supposed to be doing a job when she decided to tackle the duckling, and no, she was not having a good morning already, as NOTHING was getting done well, even with supervision.
SOOOOOO,
My question to all my bloggy friends with disabled children,
How do you handle their laziness, their lack of direction even when doing simple chores, and their lack of comprehension that they did something really wrong????
Lili has been showing SO MUCH language lately, using words that just floored me, and then, she just goes TOTALLY backward.
All of a sudden, even simple things evade her.
I look forward to some help here, as it is an issue that kind of runs through all 4 of them,
the serious ups and downs in comprehension, ability, desire, etc...
But, this is the first causalty, and we really hope to keep it that way:)

My sweet little girl, almost 9 years old, I so wish I could get inside your head and see what makes you tick!!!
We love you, we want to guide you to as complete a life as you are capable, but we are stumped sometimes.
Blessings
Chris for all 9 of us!