Teo just told me he has a headache, and I’m so excited! Such a weird thing to be excited about, right? Teo, after a thirty minute melt down, after he calmed down, grabbed his AAC device (also known as his word tablet) and opened up the “feelings” folder then pressed the icon: “headache”. He kept pressing the icon and looking up at me, “headache, headache, headache.”
“Ok, baby, I hear you, you have a headache. I will get you juice with medicine to make you feel better.”
I jumped up, walked downstairs to prepare is “get better juice” with a huge smile in my heart and on my face. I hope he didn’t see me smiling and think that I was happy he has a headache. I’m sad that he’s not feeling well but I am happy that he can tell me where exactly in his body he is not feeling well. That never happens!
This has literally been a nine year journey. We have worked on feelings and understanding feelings inside the body, his entire life. When I say we, I mean; me, dad, grandma, his babysitter, his teachers, his aides, his Occupational Therapist, his Speech Therapist, and his ABA Therapist, all of us. We have tackled this “feelings” thing to the ground and from all angles. Finally, today, it clicked. We never know when something will click for him until it does. We just keep working on it, at different times, in different ways, and maybe it will click. Today the motivation was high. Which also means he was probably in a lot of pain, which sucks.
Such a simple thing really, at least most of us think of is as simple. We feel a headache and we are able to say “I have a headache”. We are able to express our feelings with the hopes that our needs to feel better will be met. I imagine that it’s such an internal struggle for Teo, his needs not getting met, over and over again, because he can’t tell someone how he’s feeling, where inside it hurts. As his mom I’ve definitely learned how to read his body language and guess where is might hurt or what’s wrong with him, but it’s just a guess. An intuitive guess. Sometimes I’m right, and sometimes I have no clue if I’m right. There are days he points to his knee, gives me his finger to “kiss and make better”, turns around and pushes his back into me, points to his eye, hits his ear, rubs his shoulder, or puts my hand on an open wound - he can get his point across for the most part.
But he never says with his own words:
“I’m not feeling good, I have a headache”.
“Mom, I hurt myself”.
“I’m sick.”
“I fell down and hurt my knee.”
“Mom, can you rub my back.”
“Someone hurt me”.
It’s a scary thought that he would never be able to tell me if someone else hurt him. That’s why it’s so important that we figure out how to make it click in his head, how he can describe to us how he is feeling or where he is hurting. I get a bit jealous when I see a kid at the playground fall down and hurt themselves and they run up to their parent to tell them what happened. Silly I know, feeling jealous. But I think to myself, if she can run and tell her parent that she can probably tell her parent if someone pushed her and made her fall. I wonder if that parent realizes what a gift that is to have their child run to them and tell them exactly what happened and how they feel from that incident. It’s one of our biggest goals, getting him to tell us how he feels. As simple as it may seem it’s actually a very complex thing to teach. I watch typical kids watch their family members, they can pick up behavior and speech patterns easily by copying. Teo may copy or script, but he has never copied emotions. It seems that he is empathetic and can feel deeply, but when it comes to correctly identifying exactly how someone else is feeling or how he is feeling, he can become confused and overwhelmed very easily. Malc on the other hand will come find me and say something like “ouch, my toe” (it’s usually a toe) or “hug please”. He still can’t tell me exactly what happened but he will describe, the best to his ability, what sort of happened in his mind. “Slide, hurt, toe”.
I’ve broken the steps down a bit more, to teach my boys how to describe what they are feeling. Safe & Secure: They have to feel safe and secure, they have to feel like they can come to me or dad or a caregiver. They have to trust us. Labeling Others: They have to understand where the body parts are on a picture, a doll, another person. They might be able to identify 2 emotions in a picture or on a person, like happy and sad. Occupational Therapy: They have to do the hard work to feel themselves inside their own bodies. They need to understand where their own bodies begin and end and how to control them through self regulation. Labeling Themselves: Then they are ready to identify their own body parts and if they are feeling; sad, mad, or happy. Speech: Then the speech therapy can really work it’s magic and the complex concepts that marry body and emotions can show up. Of course, lesson plans might be linear but nothing in teaching is linear and nothing in learning his linear, so we toggle between all of the above. Once I realized that there was a necessary foundation, that we couldn’t just go straight to language, that’s when I slowed down. It’s not a scientific method by any means. After six years of therapies, it’s my own way of putting it together to ease frustration and anxiety on both ends.
So, today is a BIG day! Teo trusted me to tell me how he was feeling and he used his tools (body and AAC device) to communicate exactly where he wasn’t feeling well. Everything came together in one moment. Once he had his juice he looked at me and I knew, intuitively, that he was satisfied that he was able to get his need met in that moment. I was able to help him feel better. Now to figure out why he has the headache. That’s another mystery.
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