A-One: No! I'm not doing it! I'll do it later!
Mum: I need to finish this work with you today so that I get on to other things.
Mum: I need time to write it up, and if we do it later I'll run out of time.
A-One: Why do you need to write it up?
Mum: So that we have a record of what works and what doesn't work for you.
A-One: I'm not doing it now!
Mum, feeling rising frustration and disappointment: Please, can we do it now? Don't you want to work in with me on this?
A-One: Yes, but we can do it later.
Mum: Do you not want to do it now because you want to go back to watching the movie?
A-One, unable to stop a chuckle rising: I'll only watch 15 minutes; I won't watch the whole movie.
Mum, knowing A-One's '15 minutes': It'll probably only take about 5 minutes to work on the clocks.
A-One: How many pages?
Mum: Only one today. Next week we'll add in second hands. Then there's millisecond hands, microsecond hands.
A-One: Second hands move all the time! How can you do that?
Mum: It's not so much about learning how to tell the time; it's about exercising that part of your brain that understands relationships between things.
A-One: I don't need to exercise that part of my brain!
Mum: Can we do it now? The other things I need to do will mean I'm out of the house later on.
... A-One moved to the table with the clocks exercise.
Again he got the first one wrong, applying the same principle to the big hand as to the little hand i.e. between 2 numbers rather than using the whole 60 minutes. After reminding him to count in 5s around the clock, he zoomed confidently through the page. I noticed at times that he touched his finger to the numbers as he counted in 5s around the clock.
I'm now reminding myself to tell him only what's planned for the next session, not for later sessions - it's too much for him to contemplate, especially when he's not being co-operative.
He's now watching the movie!
No comments:
Post a Comment