Creative Therapies

Two years ago I blogged about Lucas being a "speech therapist in training." I wouldn't be surprised if he does end up on a career path involving therapy!

After Kayla's first couple of visits with the vision therapist Lucas put some imagination into some 'therapies' that he created at home.

On a side note: I think Kayla is going through the beginning stages of puberty. I know! But the emotions! Oh my goodness. The littlest things set her off. She does this fake/whine/cry sound thing when she's upset over something; which seems to happen more often than not. Lucas has become really in-tuned to her feelings and tries to cheer her up or do things to distract her. One time in the car she was upset about going home and was going on and on with this cry and Lucas asked us to put on the song "Call Me Maybe" because he knows she loves that song. And it worked. She stopped crying and started singing along. He uses music a lot when they're upstairs playing and she gets upset he'll put on a CD so she'll start dancing instead.

One day she was just having a bad day. Moody. Emotional. You name it. I was upset with her about something. We were both getting frustrated.

I finally took a time-out for myself. Then I gathered her up in my arms and made her lay down with me on the couch to just chill out. She rarely does this and resisted at first. I just kept trying to talk to her and asking her to use words to explain to me what was going on. She finally relaxed enough to just be there with me on the couch.

In the mean time Lucas said he was going to draw Kayla a picture because he wanted to cheer her up and make her happy. He brought this picture over to us and whispered to me that it was also a "therapy picture."

The animals at the bottom of the picture are sheep and he wanted Kayla to pick out which sheep was different. I guess since hearing us talk about her convergence insufficiency he wanted to see if he could help her eyes work together.

Several days later Lucas was concocting something in the front room. When he finally told us we could come see it he said it was a 'therapy game.'

You had to stand behind something and throw the bean bags over the first 3 boxes and get them to land in the middle of the set of boxes in the back. He was so proud of himself.

He told Kayla she had to stand behind his line and she couldn't go OVER the line. Kayla looked at his line and followed his direction of not going OVER it. She went AROUND it instead so she could be a little closer when she was throwing her bean bags.

I love to watch his creativity develop - because I have none myself!