A Little Closer

June 4, 2017Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Professional Development, Reflections, Speech Language Pathology, Things Kids Say, Writing Tags: attachment, connection, Coping skills, Distance, grandparents, love, Sorrow, The Daily Post, Things Kids Say 2 Comments

Photo: vugust on tumblr

“Granpa is no here anymore,” he stated, morose, “he go back to very far.”

The little boy raised impossibly long-lashed honey eyes to me but I didn’t think he was looking at anything in the room. His eyes were seeing through the walls and out to where a presence is not constrained by oceans, mileage, and topography.

His little face was pinched in a sad frown and he fingered the edge of his shirt, before taking in a long breath that seemed to fill not only his lungs but also return the sparkle into his eyes. He pointed a small finger at the center of his chest. Exhaled. Took another breath.

“But Granpa no really faraway,” he declared, the last two words blended into one in a sing-song. “My heart think so he only little closer very far.”

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A New Friend

June 3, 2017Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Funnies, Life and love, Professional Development, Speech Language Pathology, Things Kids Say, Writing Tags: children, development, Imaginary friend, parenting, Reality, speech-language-pathology, The Daily Post, Things Kids Say 5 Comments

Photo: duffylondon.com

There needs to be an extra chair now at the table, another place setting, extra fork. The bath requires extra towels. Reading choices necessitate an added pause. There are lively conversations from the bedroom, laughter, whispered dialogue, deep monologues. A seat to save in rides, a window-or-middle deliberation. Opinions of a first-line advisor, a determined intermediate, a confidante.

Granted, he is secretive, selective, and exclusive. It doesn’t mean he isn’t a good friend.

Accepting him is fact, not question. Get used to it. He’s there. He may not show up to explain, but he will not be ignored or shunned. Be nice. He has deep feelings. He has needs. A keen mind.

Should not matter that he is a dragon-human made of magic. Invisible to all but a certain little one.

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A Way Out

May 12, 2017Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Professional Development, Reflections, Speech Language Pathology, Things Kids Say, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: Finding a way, Language Disorders, Learning Disorders, Maze, School assignment, Schoolwork, speech therapy, speech-language-pathology, The Daily Post, Things Kids Say 2 Comments

Clay Tablet Babylon (Ca. 2000-1700 BC); SCHOYENCOLLECTION.com

“I just get lost,” she sighed. Her pre-teen face was creased with dejection.

Schoolwork is hard for her. She tries but often fails to live up not only to the expectations of her school, but also – and harder still – to her own views of perfection. She begins. Gives up. Procrastinates. Misses deadlines. Then needs to make-up what she had delayed as well as keep up with current assignments. School is a merry-go-round of stress and frustration.

“Lost how?” I prompted. Not only did I want to understand more about what she’d meant (rather than assume I knew it), but one of the things we’d been working on is expanding her ability to narrate her feelings and perceptions, explain and communicate her needs.

She glanced at me, not quite in irritation, but almost.

“I’m not being tricky,” I smiled. “I really want to understand.”

“Fine,” she sighed again. Her brow furrowed as she thought, and she reached over to the pad of paper that rested on the desk between us. Doodling can sometimes help make paths for words.

She scribbled for a moment, then her breath deepened and she flipped to a new page on the pad. “It’s like this,” she said.

She drew a labyrinthine squiggle that turned several times onto itself. Added another squiggle that sprouted from it, then another, and another. Sketched a stick figure at one end of the criss-crossed creation and a bulls-eye at the other. Looked up at me to see if I’m still paying attention.

Very much so. I smiled encouragement.

“I have stuff to do and I think I know how, but I start doing it and then I get stuck,” she moved her finger over the squiggle till it ‘hit a wall.’ “So I go back, and I try another way … and I get stuck again,” her finger slid on top of the paper to another dead-end.

She looked up again. Her eyes were bright.

“So I get lost …” she swiveled her finger around the squiggly lines in a half-aimless, half-frantic manner. “It’s too hard. I give up.”

“I hear you. I really do.” I nodded, lifted my pen, and drew another squiggle around hers, connecting the pencil figure with the bulls-eye. “We need to find a better way. A way without a maze.”

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Make My Bitter Better

May 8, 2017Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Funnies, Speech Language Pathology, Things Kids Say, Writing Tags: Better, Bitter, Chocolate, Creative thinking, Funnies, Logic, speech therapy, The Daily Post, Things Kids Say 4 Comments

candy dish: theartofdoingstuff.com

“I think I need three chocolates,” she noted after assessing the contents of the candy bowl.

“How come?” I smiled. She knew she was allowed one candy, and the ever so slight emphasis on the word need was expertly done.

“Well …” she paused, little brain wheels hastily cobbling up a good-enough rationale. Her eyes brightened, “… because I even had pepper for lunch when it was before … and … more chocolate is going to make my bitter better.”

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“I Gray?”

April 25, 2017Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Professional Development, Reflections, Speech Language Pathology, Things Kids Say Tags: Black and White, Colors, Comprehension, Mixed Feelings, Multiracial children, Race and communication, Self-acceptance, speech-language-pathology, The Daily Post, Things Kids Say Leave a comment

Photo: picklebums.com

His maman is from Haiti. His “so called papa” is “no one you’d want to remember” (as per his maman and grand-maman) because he has “no color in his eyes or heart.”

The boy has soft waves of honey brown hair. Cupid lips. Deep brown eyes. Light caramel skin. Freckles on his nose.

He’s recently discovered the magic of combining colors. He finds it entrancing. He is especially moved by the alchemy of what happens when you add white.

“You have black?” he asks, pointing to the Play-doe containers on my shelf.

“No,” I note, “I ran out. But I have brown.”

“Let me see.”

I hand him a container and he pulls the lid off and inspects the contents. “It in the wrong place,” he states, pointing to the yellow lid.

“I know. I just used a container I already had. It didn’t come that way. We made the brown from mixing different colors.”

“Who make it?”

“One of the other kids I work with made it. You want to try and make brown, too?”

He frowns, considers, shakes his head. “But I want some.”

“You want to use some of it? Sure. Go ahead.”

He pinches a bit of the dough and rolls in pensively between his fingers. “You have white?”

“I do!” I give him the white-topped container. He peeks in. After the yellow-topped one holding brown, one never knows …

He pulls out a chunk and begins kneading the white piece into the brown. A moment passes, then another. He’s quiet. He’s got something on his mind.

“Brown people are called black,” he notes.

“Hmm…” I nod. I wonder if he’d say more.

He glances at the yellow lid and I wonder if he’s wondering if it is one more of those “in the wrong place” designations. He sighs.

“I black but I also white,” he raises his eyes to me. “That mean I gray?”

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“I pleased her!”

April 12, 2017April 12, 2017Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Funnies, Speech Language Pathology, Things Kids Say, Writing Tags: Asking Please, Conflict, Funnies, Miscommunication, parenting, Permission, Siblings, The Daily Post, Things Kids Say 2 Comments

siblings2

The cacophony coming from the children’s room was deafening.

She walked in to two small teary faces. One red with indignation, one blotchy with enraged demand. A pile of blocks depicted fresh ruins. A toy car spun a morose wheel toward an apathetic ceiling.

The wails rose to crescendo, a duet for justice.

She knelt to wrap an arm around each sobbing set of shoulders. “Shhh….” she cooed, “What happened?”

“He …” the girl accused, an index finger poking emphasis at her brother. “He broke my castle.” Tears flowed.

“I didn’t!” he protested, matching tear to bawl. “She push me! It broked!”

“He put the car on my castle! Castles are for princesses!”

“But …” he cried, insisted, “but … I said please, Mommy! I pleased her first!”

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“My Eyes Forgot!”

April 10, 2017Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Funnies, Things Kids Say, Writing Tags: Clean up, Funnies, imagination, Immersion, parenting, play, Priorities, The Daily Post, Things Kids Say 2 Comments

clean-up-messy-room-Switchmonkey

The room looked as if a tornado had gone through it: Toys of every size and color dotted the floor, a scatter of crayons peaked from under the bookcase, bits of paper snow-flaked the rug, a shirt’s sleeve and a lonely sock used an open drawer for recliner.

“Rachel!” the mother’s arms climbed to her waist in indignation. She’d cleaned this room that very morning.

The little girl lifted her face from the doll in her hands. Her visage was the epitome of innocence.

“Look at this room!” her mom exasperated.

The girl rotated her head obediently but without conviction.

“The mess!” the mom repeated when the child said nothing.

“Oh,” the child shrugged. One ponytail holder bobbed deeper than the other–it was hanging by a hair. “My eyes forgot to see it.”

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“They did it!”

April 6, 2017Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Funnies, Speech Language Pathology, Things Kids Say, Writing Tags: Cookies, Creative thinking, Denial, Evidence, Funny, parenting, The Daily Post, Things Kids Say 4 Comments

Goldfish

“It wasn’t me!”

The potbellied cookie-jar was stranded sideways on the kitchen floor amidst small mountains of spilled cookies in various states of broken. The jar’s lid wobbled under a chair a few feet away.

I looked at the small face, cherubic auburn curls surrounding dimpled cheeks. The forcefulness of the denial belied the crumbs around the lips, the sticky hands, the guilty blue-gray eyes.

“It wasn’t, eh?” I worked to keep my eyebrows in line.

The preschooler squirmed but didn’t fold. She shook her head emphatically, looked around, and tapped her lower lip with a (suspiciously chocolatey) finger.

An idea dawned into her face and she pointed said finger at the aquarium where three goldfish lazed. “They did it!”

My eyebrows escaped. “The fish?!”

A wholehearted nod. She was warming to the thought. “Yeah! They don’t like fish food every day every day anymore … and … and … it the fish birthday …” she swung her finger from one idle swimmer to the next. “Um, this one! See? He didn’t even want fish food for his birthday!”

(Thank you, A.J.!)

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Interconnected

March 26, 2017Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Current events, Funnies, Life and love, Professional Development, Speech Language Pathology, Things Kids Say, Writing Tags: Adolescents, Funnies, Interconnectedness, parenting, phones, Pre-teens, Symbiosis, Technology, The Daily Post, Things Kids Say 4 Comments

Photo: Etsy

“She has a symbiotic relationship with that phone,” the mother complained, eyebrows raised and head tipped in the direction of her daughter.

The pre-teen (on cue) rolled her eyes without lifting them from her opposing thumbs and the aforementioned item’s screen.

“See?!” the mom announced, vindicated.

“Whatever,” the girl sighed in the tone dedicated to oldsters who cannot possibly understand the nuances and necessities of modern life. She placed her phone face-down on the desk and turned her head to her mother. “Happy now?”

The mom nodded, half-mollified, half-mortified.

The lass-with-sass turned to me. “She keeps on me for that phone but she’s the one who’s always on the phone.”

“It’s work stuff,” the mother defended, reddening. Her own ‘lifeline’ already half-way out of her purse.

“Mine’s school stuff,” the girl countered. Her eyebrows rose in victory, a mirror image of her mother’s.

I smiled at their banter. It was a well-rehearsed dance, a sparring of connection more than true conflict.

“Funny thing …” I pulled out the work I had planned for our session that day: a passage and discussion about symbiosis, the close and often long-term interaction between two different species …

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