Little Princess loves stories...

… and adventure!

Yesterday I had an hour or two alone with Little Princess. I told her all about helping one of my clients organise a trip abroad.

First I had to explain who the client is.

I told her that my client is twenty-five years-old, and explained how she has finished her first degree and her post-graduate studies and is just about to leave university with a master’s degree in psychology.

I went on to explain how many university students like to study, work or travel abroad after graduating and that my client is no different in having the same wish.

Despite attending grammar school and university independently without the assistance that our children now have, with her mother and older siblings helping her on the rare occasions that she needed help, my client was not so sure she could travel abroad independently.

‘Why?’ asked Little Princess.

I always think that Little Princess is preparing for her future whenever she asks me searching questions, so I try to give her full and interesting answers.

I explained that however many things that my client has accomplished alone during her life there is always that initial worry about what is coming next, concern about how will she manage. We all fear it but when there is a disability too to cope with there is even more things to worry about.

I explained that so far during my client’s life there has always been someone nearby to help her out if need be. At school for the first few years her sister was still in attendance too, and she was only a thirty minute bus ride from home. The first university she attended was just a two-hour car-drive from home near enough so Mum could nip over if called. Her brother lived in the city where she did her Master’s degree and she lived with him at the beginning before she found a room for herself.

The story continued by my relating how over the years my client has become more and more independent. But, and it is a big but, travelling abroad is a huge step for anyone and for my client especially. Not knowing a country makes everything that comes in ones path more difficult. Not having someone you know within a few hundred miles of you is another stepping stone to get over. And that, I told Little Princess is where I stepped in and with use of my connections in the conductive world my client has now organised what sounds like an amazing trip abroad.

I told Little Princess how my twenty-five year-old client has always been a bit of a ‘guinea pig’ in her world living with disability and my conductive world. I explained how I have learnt so much from her achievements since I first met her when she was 4 ½ years-old, just as I learnt from Little Princess.

I told Little Princess that I hoped that my client would be testing the waters for us once again and that this trip abroad is the exciting adventure that we hope it will be it could be the beginning of great developments in all our conductive worlds.  These are developments that could mean that in the not too distant future Little Princess and her friends can also take part, when they are old enough.

I think that this story was motivation enough for Little Princess to learn a foreign language as fast as she can and to become as independent as possible as soon as possible, as Little Princess’s only  words at the end of the story, after asking how much something like this would cost, were ‘I will tell Mama!’

Little Princess is by the way eleven-years-old, going on twenty-five! She also has a severe problem with physically speaking, but has no problem at all in communicating!

She was the sunshine on a rainy Friday afternoon. Thank you.

Daily, weekly and annual routines

Winter at Boxdorf village pond

It is nice to be reminded just how important our daily, weekly, and even annual routines are. 

An early morning cup of tea on the balcony, a weekly visit to a friend, or the seasonal routines of blowing eggs for Easter, making cards for Christmas meeting for an autumn family walk, all remind us that our world is turning nicely.

At my work the children often remind me how much they depend on their own routines' staying constant when they arrive at the group and ask- ‘Where is Évi?’ or ‘Where is Susie?’ when one of us is ill or working elsewhere.

They always notice when another piece of our new kitchen is installed, and have a hundred questions to ask and need to look through the new cupboards and drawers to make sure that all the old things that they are used to are still there.

When a school assistant is ill, or a new replacement begins, it is the first story we hear before coats are removed.

If Mum or Dad is away at work, if a favourite teacher has left the school, or a sibling has gone off on a skiing trip, these changes are also reported. These changes are often the reasons for differences in children’s moods and the children know, without really knowing, why it is important to report these changes in routine to us and to their friends – we discuss them over lunch, their friends ask questions and we all learn from the situation. We learn how to adapt and learn new ways of coping with what comes along in our paths through life.

Spring at Boxdorf village pond

As conductors we must remember that we also have clients who cannot rush in the room and ask where someone is, tell us that brother is away all week and that he is sorely missed, tell us that Dad has had to fly off on a business trip, or that Grandma is poorly and now in hospital. Many of our children cannot report these routine-changing events to us so we must remember that when a child is sad, does not want to eat, seems restless, unmotivated, agitated or unhappy that perhaps their routine has also changed and perhaps we should ask about it in order to indicate in some way that we understand.

This of course happens positively too. Positive changes in routines also have to be discussed and changes in behaviour noted and often praised.

I am the first person to initially react negatively to change. I have improved as I get older but still my initial reaction to a change in my routine is fear, worry, it can even be panic. This may only last for the few seconds that it takes for me to tell myself everything is fine in its new way, or it can last for days and weeks depending on the degree of change.

I think it is one of the reasons that being a conductor suits me, because although my work is so varied and colourful there is always that underlying routine in it that we need to develop for the clients and it does me good too.

I have work in a new city, a new family, a new group of adults, new colleagues, but when the work starts I have to build into it a routine and this is very calming and reassuring and spreads its influences out onto my personal life.

Summer at Boxdorf village pond

What made me start thinking about routines today?

It was when I sat down to read the newspaper with my early morning cup of tea, the one that always tastes best, and I realised how much I had missed this routine and thought perhaps that this was why I never seemed to get going on Saturdays recently.

At last … my Guardian Weekly had arrived and just in time for Saturday morning breakfast as it always used to.

I cancel it when I go away and it usually starts appearing again the week after I return home.

But after my Christmas and New Year break it did not appear in my letter box – week after week.

At first I did not realise why, I thought I must have told them the wrong start-date, but eventually I wrote an email and was told that they had forgotten to restart delivery. My routine had been disturbed and oh how I had missed it.

Each morning as I got ready for work I took Chekhov or one of my other Christmas books with me, all quite heavy tomes, instead of compactly folding the Weekly into my pocket.

Rotating routines

My new routine starts again on Monday, the one that I have to prepare for with lots of sleep in the preceding weeks because it exhausts me.

For three weeks I have been working with the stroke group in the mornings but next Monday I begin three weeks with the Kindergarten children. This work starts an hour earlier but my day still stretches on well into the evenings as always. I find this work tiring but I have developed this as part of my routine so that despite always catching a cold from the always runny noses, I love it.

The dependable routine of nature always accompanies everything we do and makes its own changes along the way. I am happy to see that when I get up a earlier next week I will now be able to enjoy some daylight before I start work and perhaps in the evenings too, on my way home, if I am lucky to get away on time!

Autumn at Boxdorf village pond

My old much-loved, and much-needed, routine

The snow has almost melted and the days might warm up soon if it does not snow again, then I can begin the other routine that I love so much – cycling to work. 

Despite the massive amount of road-works on my route for the extended tramway I am determined to ride my way into the routine of summer, with nature gazing, picking four-leaved clovers and photographing the sunset all to look forward to!

I am glad that nature with its seasons ring the changes but still keeps to its daily routine.

PS

I chose the photographs published here to illustrate my early morning routine of observing the seasonal changes at our local village pond,  not to illustrate the changing rhythms of nature that also affect our lives, that is something else to be dealt with another time.

Our food programme

Fun while mixing fruit

I have just been listening to the Food Programme on BBC Radio 4, it was all about soup. It appears that soup has become trendy and the electric soup-maker is the new object to have standing on the kitchen worktop.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0520t3d

As far as I am concerned soup never went out of fashion. In my childhood scotch-broth, thick vegetable and minestrone were my soups of choice for grammar-school-days’ lunches, while my sister invariable took tomato. Mondays, after a Sunday chicken-dinner, were also soup days – Chicken soup with suet dumplings or Norfolk Swimmers, dumplings without suet.

As a vegetarian making veggie-soup became an art in itself especially when I was a art student in a house full of vegetarians. We would see who could make the biggest and tastiest pot-full that lasted the whole week! It was cheap. We always made homemade bread to go with it.

My Dad and I make soups too and using leeks from the garden with a potato to thicken it is the most popular one. My sister has one of the new soup-makers mentioned on Radio 4 so Dad and I can have a go with that when I am next home.

Conductive soups and milk-shakes

A few months ago we received a present of a soup-maker for use mainly in the Conductive Education afternoon group. Knowing that Évi and I do lots of cooking with the afternoon group (it was alphabet pancakes today) our Boss sent us a soup-maker that can also be used for milk-shakes!

The machine gets used for both soup and shakes, but the milk-shakes are the most popular. We receive a donation of fruit and veggies every Monday morning from a local supermarket and the children make a beeline for the fridge as soon as they arrive each lunch time to see what is available. They make their choice of the day, grab the machine and get working on their milk-shake dessert.

Chilli and chocolate preparations

There is often something to go with the milk-shake and this time it was blue waffles!

We have decided to make a cookery book as there have been so many weird and wonderful creations – my favourite being the carrot and banana, and the chilli-chocolate.

'Let me show you how to do it!'

 

This time it was fruit pizzas with paprika,carrot and banana shake!

It was a delight to watch as one child, who did not know how to use the machine, was taught by a child who has made a new flavour milk-shake every week for months, a child who has athetoid cerebral palsy and has very severe difficulties with her speech. It was amazing how they managed, but they did and without any help from me. Just my smiles of praise and approval!

What I find amazing and love to be a part of is when we place ingredients on the table that we know sort of go together and then let the children take their pick and concoct a soup.

Each creation will taste great but will all be very different.

The ingredients that go in to each soup can often depend on the nationality of the cook or sometime  just on what they are used to eating at home – paprika goes in the Hungarian girl’s soup and celery root and parsley in the German’s.

Tasting each other’s soup and giving advice on what to add is an important part of the cooking process, then all the soups get eaten with great relish and they nearly always taste delicious.

Our group of cooks has decided that homemade food, especially their very own homemade food, tastes best because it is full of tender loving care and only contains those ingredients that they like to eat.

Of course we are teaching our teenagers how to fend for themselves in the future but as far as they are concerned they are just having lots of fun and drinking lots of weird and wonderful milk shakes!

Fruit Pizza with paprika/carrot or strawberry/choco milk-shake

PS

The cookery book should be out for Christmas 2015! These are the authors at work -