So....

Olivia has an Expressive Speech Disorder.

That does NOT excuse her behaviour in relation to hitting (please ground swallow me up & let me hide from the shame of it), horrible noises instead of speech & tantrums at 6 am because she is not getting what she wants (I realise that no one is thinking rationally at this unearthly hour).

That does NOT excuse my breakdown at OT today after I had to put Olivia in timeout for trying to take a headband out of my hair & refusing to quit it despite my best "calm yet authoritative voice". It was just the last straw on a difficult week.

There have been many times when I have left a situation, turned around or put my dark sunnies on to shed a tear or 2 for MANY different reasons, but I could do none of those things today. I fear that my 10 year old niece now knows how unstable I am.

I love you Lolly girl, tomorrow is another chance for us to get it right.

But while you sleep tonight I will attempt to make a pact with you - if you dont wake me before 7am I promise to have more patience tomorrow & maybe, just maybe, instead of time outs & escalating arguements you can ride your bike to the park & tell me a story along the way. (BTW - I will take sleepy silence as agreeance)

QUACK

I take too much for granted. Sure its all relative. My good days are someone elses bad & vice versa.

But QUACK is a big deal is this household, or atleast it was tonight.

I'm sure ducks take their "speech" for granted but in this house, tonight, any duck would have been proud of my 4 year old who until now has not ever been able to form her mouth into K.

We have sat in front of the mirror repeating it over & over again so that she can see how I form my mouth & then how she forms her mouth to try the same sound. I have tried to hold the front of her tongue down while she attempts the sound. I have tried to explain how to make the sound (give it a try some time, it is extremely hard).

But for some reason it just clicked with QUACK this evening (& only this word). Then she lost it again for about 5 minutes, so we pushed on & she gave up so I pushed some more & then it returned.

Smarties were handed out & many praises sung. The fact that it was at the end of the word was the icing on the cake. For the last 5 months we have been concentrating on sounds at the start of words but in the last 2 weeks we have moved on to the end of words.

So for her to get this sound at the end of the word is well deserving of a little happy dance & a smartie.