Listening

When listening to others we ‘hear’ the verbal information they are giving us, not only the words that are said but the tone used to convey these words.  But we also listen to the visual cues given to us, body language.

All this was brought most forcibly to my mind yesterday by Miss Heidi.

The day started off ordinarily enough.  Annie woke up singing which woke up Heidi.  We had breakfast, got dressed and walked to Heidis Pre-School.

Pre-School sessions have gone from 2 hours to 2.5 hours this term.  This was our 5th session with the extra half hour and Heidi has been exhausted at the end of the previous 4 sessions.  Funny how a mere 30 minutes can make such a massive difference.  I realised yesterday that Heidi has only just reached the age at which Annie started Kinder.  No wonder Annie was physically able to cope better, she was just that much older.

When I collected Heidi after Kinder she was happily sitting on the floor at group time on her vibrating cushion.  Her aide was wearing an assortment of necklaces that Heidi was having lots of fun pulling off her then draping over her again.  This is an improvement from the last few sessions where Heidi has been off on her own crying and unhappy.

Heidi said “goodbye M” to her aide, making fantastic eye contact and we were all thrilled.  She was also very insistent that it was time to go home.

Back home and Heidi ate 3 bananas in rapid succession, refusing to look at any other food on offer.  Annie came back from an outing to the shops with some lovely girls from Church.

Then the race was on.  Bags packed, I’m taking the bags out to the car when I discover the girls have followed me outside despite my instructions to wait inside. Grr.  I buckled them both in the car, Heidi is distressed because “Not that seat belt, the other seat belt”.  See she used to have a full body harness seat belt but it got left in someone elses car two weeks ago and I’ve yet to get it back.  Plus Heidi is now tall enough for the over the shoulder belt.  But I think she misses the comfort of the full body harness.

I realise Heidi has no shoes on, she wants her slippers.  I go back inside, get Annie’s jacket, the other bags I’d not been able to carry outside on my first trip and try to find Heidi’s slippers.  No luck and so I grab her runners.

OMG! Heidi is not happy about the shoe change but I eventually get the runners on her and we race out the driveway to Annies Pre-School, late already and Heidi upset about the double blow of seat belt and shoes.

I park outside the Pre-School gates, tell Heidi to wait in the car I will be right back, Heidi says “I want to go too” in the most heartbreaking voice but I’m ignoring her, its all about the getting things done quickly in my mind.  Annie hops out of the car and says ‘goodbye heidi’, Heidi is too busy saying ‘I want to go too’ and does not say goodbye to Annie.  We race through the gate, Annie goes into the building, I sign the book beside the front door and go back out to the car, all of 2 minutes.  Heidi is in full blown hysterics when I get back “I WANT TO GO TOO”.  But I’m pleased that I saved 15 minutes by not getting Heidi in and out of the car.

As I drive away the screams change to “I WANT MY SISDER” “I NEED MY SISDER”.
Using my calm inside voice I tell Heidi “Annie is at Pre-School, she will be back soon”.

“Be Back Soon” is a very useful phrase emphasising that we will be back but not giving a definite time frame.

To distract Heidi I started telling her we would go to McDonalds and get chips “NO THE CHIPPIE HOUSE, I WANT THE CHIPPIE HOUSE”.

:sigh: this was getting old.  But the promise of chips and juice calmed the screams down even though I still had no idea exactly which chippie house I was meant to visit.

I pulled into the BP to get petrol and Heidi watched me intently through the car window the whole time, then I went inside to pay and get the chips and juice.

Got back to the car to find Heidi in tears of fear, ‘you go away mummy, you dispeered’.

We start driving by now very late and with only 15 minutes to get to speech therapy which was at the very least a 30 minute drive away.

I reach back from the front seat and give Heidi her chippies and she starts munching happily.  While stopped at a traffic light I decant a little of the juice from the bottle into Heidi’s water bottle which has a pop top lid and is less likely to spill than the open mouthed juice bottle.  As I hand the water bottle back to Heidi she grabs it and the juice inside it spurts everywhere.  Screams start again.

Stop the car, get her out, big hug, change clothing that has two tiny spots of juice on it, put her in the Annies car seat.

The unhappiness ceases.  The novelty of being in Annie’s seat starts a constant stream of talking from Heidi telling me about her wet seat, her juice spilling, the crunchy chippies.  :phew:

We get to speech therapy 20minutes late and Heidi is reluctant to get out of the car, very concerned about ‘jumping the muddy puddle’ that is a tiny bit of water in the gutter and when we finally get in the building she does not want to leave the waiting room.

Once in the speech therapy room Heidi sits on her vibrating pillow, pulls her snow hat over her head and then throws herself face first into my lap.  At this point she stops talking and is making squeeking noises which I have become very familiar with in the hours after our previous 4 extended kinder sessions.

Her hands alternate from covering her ears to covering her eyes.  Heidi’s classic “I’m overwhelmed and need to reduce sensory input” body language.

And the speech therapist and I realise that not much is going to get done in todays session.  After lots of squishes (joint compressions) and much wiggling and jiggling we did get about 10 minutes of work done.

What I ignored in my desire not to be late was all the verbal and non-verbal cues Heidi was giving me.  Holding onto my hand so tightly I thought my fingers would break, clinging to my shoulders when I picked her up.  Covering her eyes during each transition.  The tears and unhappiness over little things that Heidi has learnt to cope with.  The requests for the familiar and the old (bananas, harness seat belt and slippers).  Heidi was overwhelmed, she’d done so well at Kinder but that had taken all of her resources and really what she needed was a quiet afternoon at home playing in the familiar safe environment.

Sometimes Mummys don’t have their listening eyes and ears on either.   But I finally heard, not sure what I’m going to do though because we don’t have another time we can get to speech therapy.  It might just be that Heidi has to finish Kinder early on the days we have speech.

In the meantime I have a long list of speech therapy homework to cover

“His / Hers”

“He / She”

“In front / Behind”

and more eye contact when making requests because Heidi is reducing her eye contact again.

However this morning when we were dropping Annie at Kinder I listened when Heidi reached out her arms and said “I come too”.

I listened when she held her cousins hand and said to him “you want to come to our house and play with me”.

So remembering it is a balancing act, listening to my needs yes but remembering that what I need to do will not happen to anyones satisfaction if I do not listen to my childrens needs as well.  All very much proved by the disastrous speech therapy session yesterday.