RDI is alot of “thinking about thinking.” And verbalizing it. Just now, Zip asked me for juice. He had taken the juice bottle out of the fridge but cannot pour it himself yet. I noticed that the cup that he’d just used wasn’t there, so I asked him, “Where’s your cup?” (Quick aside – I should have turned it into a better moment by musing out loud, “Hmmm… wonder what we could put the juice in…” but I just thought of that as I was writing this.)
Zip has almost no ability to find things like a cup in the next room. So I began saying what I was doing, “I need to find your cup. Maybe it’s in this room. Your cup wasn’t in the kitchen so I need to go look for it.”
After a moment or two, he followed me into the den where his cup was very visible on the table. So, together, we found the cup and brought it back to the kitchen to fill with juice. Mission accomplished, and just as much for me as for him. I need to do more of this verbalizing my thought processes with him. It gets difficult in the rush of the day. Repeat after me: “Slooooow down. Verbalize.”
One of our current RDI objectives is to work on more engagement with Zip. Now that we’re back home after losing power for four days again because of the heavy wet snowstorm, we’re trying to get back to our brand of normality. The house is mostly clean, the laundry is mostly done and I planned our homeschool assignments for the week.
As a born-and-bred New Jerseyan, I never worried much about hurricanes. I’ve always lived firmly in the lovely middle of the Garden State, not near a coast or waterway. Then along came Hurricane Irene last year and Hurricane Sandy this year. Wow! Twice now we have been walloped and left without power for several days. We lost power late Monday night and got it back almost exactly four long days later. Internet, phone and cable were there when the power came back on. Thankfully, we lost just a fence post and had no other damage, except for a whole refrigerator of spoiled food. Our generator refused to work, unfortunately.