Zalen loved Halloween and thought it was pretty amazing that you could just go door to door and people would give you candy. Might be his favorite holiday?! :-) Although Thanksgiving would be a pretty close second I think.
We also had fun making a big leaf pile and jumping in it. We painted and carved pumpkins.
Thanksgiving..... He loved, LOVED, loved the pumpkin pie.
Zalen is doing well. He is growing and learning. His English continues to expand but he still has an accent and likes to throw in extra sounds. His attention span is getting better which has been so helpful to me. I have adapted how I do lesson time though, understanding better how he learns.
10 months in and I am questioning a few areas where I feel he is very delayed in the "sensory" areas. In some areas he has made leaps and bounds. When he first came home he was very hypersensitive in his movements. (Vestibular Processing) He couldn't swing, leery of any type of height, couldn't jump, hated stairs, etc.... It is really pretty amazing to the progress he has made in these areas. He still has issues getting dressed (takes him forever) and then he will almost always come out with something on backward or inside out. Zippers and buttons are still major obstacles but he is trying really hard to conquer them. I am sure this falls under the gross motor skills. In about every other area Zalen is definitely sensory seeking. His fingers are always in his mouth (drives me crazy :-), he is always wanting to wrestle/hug, he is constantly wanting to push/pull things (remember the monkey in the stroller picture) etc... All things I have been aware of and expected.
However, in all my adoption reading I seemed to have missed out on the Internal Regulation (The Interoceptive Sense -- and this one is throwing up some flags. Things that have flagged lately......
- His breathing always seems off - we will be sitting still and doing school and he sounds like he just ran across the yard. We have had some crazy respiratory junk here and there so at first I thought it was that. Not so sure anymore.
- He never sleeps with a blanket on (I thought this was an Africa thing) and I always thought it weird b/c in all other areas he is so sensory seeking. He is also weird about wearing coats or knowing if he needs to or not. Could be a temperature thing?!
- We are still struggling with bedwetting but it is almost always at night
- We still have to limit his eating/drinking
Alrighty... can you believe in just a few months we will have Zalen home a full year?!
The self-regulation article was fascinating. Almost all the behaviors you described, I have seen in my girls to one degree or another. One year was definitely a huge turning point. I wonder if the whole culture shock thing is so overstimulating for them, it takes a long time to know how to interact with your world... so different from what they were used to; also if they were not in stimulating, learning environments before, as babies/toddlers, there could definitely be delays.
ReplyDeleteThe body temperature thing is interesting. It took both my girls a long time to become aware of that, but now 15 mo. later, they can tell if they are too hot or cold, for the most part. Also my girls were dry at night for 2 weeks after coming home; then they started having a couple accidents at night; I put pull-ups on them, and now they are wet every night, like they just trained themselves to use the pull-ups. :( Oh well, it's easier on me.
Limiting eating: yes, took about a year before they seemed to really know they were full (manifested by not wanting to eat things they don't like; even not liking certain foods took a few months). If food is in sight, they still pester me about it until I put it away. I can only imagine that if you only ate once a day or every other day, it would take a while to get used to 24/7 access to food. Food, food, everywhere! Like being on a cruise ship!
In summary, the longer they are here, the more they seem to just be "outgrowing" things even if I don't work on them, and life becomes more normal all the time. So hang in there! You're doing a great job.