Lessons from my daughter

This morning, Emily closed our bedroom door so she and the dogs wouldn’t wake us up.

This can be good or bad depending what she’s doing.

This morning, she was quietly watching tv.

When I woke-up (way later than usual) I told Emily to get dress as we were going out for breakfast.

This is what she decided the wear!

It covers the chest and the mid-section of her body so its perfect! Today, my baby looked like a bohemian!

We went for breakfast at Cora’s and Emily picked a crêpe stuffed with Nutella and bananas!!! I know I could easily make these at home but a jar of Nutella never last long here…

If there is a jar of Nutella in the house, you will most likely find Emily with the jar and a spoon hiding in the open eating as much as she can before being caught.

🍌🍫🍞

At breakfast, we talked about Broadway shows and I believe we decided that the Lion King is the one we will try to catch while in NYC.

After breakfast, we stopped by Pet Smart to get food for Maple…

Isn’t she cute? When we are out of food for her, she gets to eat Jake’s food… He is still a puppy so somehow his food is really yummy to her!!!

Isn’t he handsome?

Yes, the big dog is our baby. The little dog is our older dog and the boss.

Once we got Maple’s food, we went to Scholar’s choice.

That is one of mine and Emily’s favorite store. It’s full of books, puzzles and educational games. This morning we bought everything we will need to stay busy on our plane rides to NYC and to keep busy in the evening when we will be back in our hotel room.

After the shopping, we stopped by Starbucks, Emily took a green Iced tea lemonade while I ordered a caramel macchiato with extra caramel for my favorite guy who was about to wake-up for the day.

Nothing for me, I have to limit my coffee intake!

Once we got back in the car, Emily picked songs I like on the CD we were listening to. She rarely does that, she normally picks her music, her songs…

When I asked her what was going on she said “I love you”

😍

I love her too!!! I am a lucky mom!!!

Today was great!!!

No, I’m not pulling my own hair over life’s challenges…

I am sitting on my couch thinking about Emily’s progress…

She is in her bedroom, watching tv while playing The Sims while eating something…

This is so typical of a teenager that sometimes we forget. We forget about the challenges.

Today, I am thinking about a little 18 months old girl who started pulling her own hair out of frustrations.

She couldn’t talk, she couldn’t tell us what was bothering her…

She didn’t and still doesn’t feel pain the way we do…

Something was bothering her…

As a mother (or as a parent) it is hard to see your child suffer or struggle and not know what to do.

I didn’t want her to pull her hair and hurt herself.

We didn’t have much therapy available where we were. The Internet wasn’t as full of useful information like it is today so I went with my gut feeling once again.

Every time I saw her reach for her hair, I sat my baby in our comfy living room chair and put my head on her legs while I sat on the floor.

I put her hands in my hair.

If she was looking for a tactile stimulation, I had more hair for her to play with. I also could feel pain so when she pulled, I told her she was hurting me and she would stop pulling… Sometimes she didn’t stop fast enough for my liking but she would eventually be gentle.

I did this with her for awhile.

She appeared to like to play with my hair and slowly stopped pulling hers.

To this day, I haven’t figured out how to make her stop biting her fingers, trying to pull off her nails or stop scratching herself till she bleeds but somehow, she’s not pulling her hair of anyone else’s!

To this day, I can’t let Emily touch my nails as she tries to pull them off and they aren’t fake nails so pulling them off means a lot of pain for me. I wish I had a brilliant idea in how to stop her from doing that….

Any suggestions?