The challenges and frustrations continue with Ella. Although she seems to be over most of the physical impact of the operation, her personality has changed so much since we got back. She is cranky, fussy, will-full, uncooperative. It might be the terrible twos. It might be discomfort. It might be her way of recovering from trauma. We just don’t know. All last week she was completely uncooperative with Colleen, her physical therapist.
Often she has cooperated with Beth who has resorted to giving her “time-outs” and silent treatments. The other thing is that she only napped one day during this past week. The problem with that is that she needs the sleep. by six in the evening she’s exhausted and can barely eat her food. Last night, she was falling asleep at dinner so we put her to bed at 7. She fell right asleep then she woke up crying at 4 am. We whisked her away so she wouldn’t wake Netta up as well and brought her into bed with us. She cried off and on for about 45 minutes, then fell asleep. I think she wanted us to play with her or to watch a video or something. When she doesn’t get it, she cries. Now, we’ve decided there’s only so much catering we can do for her during the day — She can’t watch videos all day and she too cranky to do exercises so we have left her by herself with toys — “alone time”. We’ll see what happens but so far she doesn’t seem to get the hint. I always wondering what a parent does with a child that’s very developmentally delayed. I mean, what does the child do all day if they don’t get the concept of imaginative play and they aren’t able to get around on their own? Ella can get around using the gait trainer but she would very quickly get stuck on something and probably just start crying. So, unfortunately, I have arrived at the point when that question is relevant to us.
What does a parent do other than sit the kid in front of the boob tube?