Buttons

Buttons

A supplement to something that I wrote last year about the joy of success –

http://www.susie-mallett.com/2012/11/i-remember-it-well-one-of-those-very.html

Learning and development

How pedagogic specifics bear upon upbringing developments

Spreading joy

In that earlier posting I wrote about the joy of a little girl learning to do up the button at the top of her trousers. This joy spread throughout the group, at home and over many days. This success had a domino effect and started a renewed spiralling in all our lives.

Later I thought about that child’s future and about what changes that resolved problem will make to how she lives her life. Having a button to do up without turned to the trusty Velcro, and therefore having learnt to do it up by herself, means that as an adult she will be able to choose freely what trousers, skirts shirts and jackets she can buy. She will not always have to pay someone to alter her clothes. Hopefully she will never have to change buttons to Velcro and rarely have to compromise on her choice because of a lack of motor skills.

We could have asked her mother to use Velcro or to buy her trousers with an elastic waistband but we did not. Many of the non-disabled children in the Kindergarten have buttons and they all run and ask us at some time during the day for help to undo them or do them up, until they solve the problem with our help.

I have often considered things that have occurred to me since that previous posting. One question that I have asked is why alter her trousers now when she is only five-years old and learning fast? Why lay down a need to alter them in the future when we can encourage her to learn something now, something that she can achieve, and in the process of learning this develop so much more? Why should we miss out of this valuable step in a wider learning equation?

This is not specifically a question of a button on the trousers but of something more general and more important, the personal change in this child, her motivation to learn, the relationship that she is building up with me and other conductors as she blossoms, and about all the other new things that she can now do in her joy of learning and achieving.

I have considered all the skills that have that have developed since, that need her to concentrate and to look. Because she has now learned this very difficult task of buttoning her trousers, she looks more often at her hands, she uses her left hand more and she is so happy because she has learnt something that she wanted to do it. She continues to learn things through life and play each and every day, affording her more independence and bringing her such joy. Far, far more than doing up a button, this little girl is blossoming, and this is in itself also a part of huge developments at this stage in her upbringing. She listens and talks and helps others and smiles a lot.

That is the biggest behavioural change: she now smiles a lot.

A paragraph from a life

There may be good reasons why a child is not given alternative means, not given an easier option, like an elastic waistband instead for example. If we as conductors thought that she could not achieve, or it was psychologically harmful for her to try, then we would not try to teach her.

This little girl is very young, she will be going out into the world disability one less signal disability. In the future she will not need to have her clothes altered because we did not teach her to do up a button. That button is just a paragraph, not the whole story.

Other children

How important it is for this little girl to be like the other children in the Kindergarten and have a button on her trousers, and be able to do it up. Of course, if she were fifteen and could still not do it up, that would perhaps be different, and need to be rethought and approached differently. Now at five, though, she does not feel any different in her group, there are non-disabled four- and five-year olds who still ask for help with their clothes. Now through her success she feels very special, just as her peers do in their turn.

The whole group has celebrated with her. This gives her far more than taking half a year longer to do up a button takes away from her. It also gives her the opportunity to do so many other things now that she has learnt it, all with the knock-on effect of more praise from us and more acknowledgement from the disabled and the non-disabled children that she is doing so well.

She really is a very happy little girl at the moment. Giving her an elastic waist or Velcro fastenings on her trousers would have removed many of the moments that are making her happy, because there would be many things that she still could not do.

 

Since learning this skill she is much more conscious of her hands, she has to look at her hands to achieve this success. Learning to direct her eyes on something means that she is now able to look at us when she speaks to us and at her friends and at their toys while they play.

 

Has there been a 'price' for of not being able to do up a button till now? She is still just five. There are four- year-olds in the Kindergarten have had elastic trousers until recently who also ask for help with the button. They are not hemiplegic and have no motor disorder, they just have not been taught. Nobody comments that they take long or wonder why they cannot use scissors or a knife and fork. They will learn when they are taught. Do we ask what price they pay for having to ask us to do up the button? I always consider the gain for these littlies from the contact and the learning experience in those few seconds it takes to help, not of any price paid.

And by the way, using Velcro can be difficult too in my experience and does not always encourage hand-eye coordination and two-handed movements. Elastic-waist trousers present more difficulty when tucking in vests and shirts. All these are skills to learn, all appropriate clothes and fastenings in their place but not as a replacement for learning to do up a button when that skill is learnable.

Older…

An older client of mine has tried Velcro but he does not want his lovely trendy jeans messed about with, he does not wish to be different. He wants to do up his buttons so we continue learning it. He is twenty-two years old now and sometimes he manages it and is as thrilled with this as the five-year-old is. (When he cannot manage it he discretely asks someone to do it for him. He has a belt that he can always do up himself so he is secure in the knowledge that his trousers will not fall down if the button is left open.)

Where there is a will there is a way. These happy souls continue learning.

...and younger

My own little niece is nearly three. She cannot do up a button on her trousers yet. She will be able to before school I expect, because she will want to do so, so she does not have to ask someone, just like our little girl wanted to learn so she no longer needed to ask and it was important to give her that opportunity.

What a happy little button-girl we have in our group, it is no wonder with so many hugs and so much praise.

I myself was already at school when had to find out the hard way. I remember it well. I had to go to the toilet, in the cold outside (the last time, I think, that I ever went to the toilet at school), I was about four or so. The teacher said she would come and help me but she did not come, I expect she forgot. I remember wandering around in the half-covered area in the dreary autumn cold, lost. When the teacher eventually arrived I had by then done my clothes up myself. No praise received for that success, just a telling-off because I was lost. I probably did not even say anything at home about that huge step in my upbringing. I would have been too afraid to but it would have been noticed, I am sure.

 

I am sure that we do better than that.

Rueing the day

Our English country-garden

Bee orchid

My Grandmother's favourite rose

Last asparagus of the year and first red currants!

A friend I 'rescued' from a  bucket of water

The shallots that I strung up for Dad

That is my A-level pottery pot in the background. Almost an antique!

The new wild-flower garden

Home for a long weekend

Of course I do not rue the day that I went home, over two weeks ago now, to help my Dad after an operation on his hand to release the nerve squashed in the carpal tunnel. I do, however, rue just one moment of the following day, when I went out into Dad’s lovely garden, to pick some flowers for the kitchen windowsill, wearing just my shorts, a short-sleeved shirt and no gardening gloves.

Garden armour

When I work in my Dad’s garden I am nearly always well covered, from head to toe. At my Dad’s house, stored in my childhood bedroom, I have gardening gloves, hats for all seasons, several thick, long-sleeved shirts, long trousers and sturdy shoes.

I always wear these clothes for gardening but I do not change into them when I just go out to pick flowers.

Flower picking is something that I often do on a whim, even when wearing a summer dress and sandals. It is something I always joined in with spontaneously to help Mum as she made bouquets to take to market.

But not any longer! Those days have passed for ever.

From now on I will put on my gardening armour, whatever job I am doing.

The real gardening jobs

When I was at home at the beginning of July, on a flying five-day visit, I did lots of proper gardening, things like harvesting shallots, weeding the strawberries, the parsnips, the asparagus and beetroot, and tying up the roses. Things that I knew, if left undone, would be a worry to my Dad during the next week or two as he recovered from the operation on his hand. All of this work I did while well wrapped up in my gardening-armour. Not a stinging nettle, not a rose thorn, not even a thistle, managed to penetrate it.

The nice bits in between

I have been picking flowers in this garden for forty-four years! My mum and I used to make gorgeous bunches of country-garden flowers that she sold on the car-boot market. I still make up bunches for myself, my Dad, the neighbours and family and friends, whenever I am at home. Mum planted her garden with all sorts of unusual things to make these bouquets special.

Just as Mum always did, this time I also picked a few sprigs of rue to use as greenery in my flower arrangement. Its silvery leaves and yellowy flowers looked good amongst the lilies, marigolds, margaritas and roses that I had already found.

While I was picking the sprigs of rue I decided to give the plant a bit of a tidy up. I thinned it out and shook the tangled stalks apart that were heavy with rain water. The plant was beginning to hang down on to a lower path, between the flowerbed and the vegetable garden so when it rained it drooped and then brushed against our legs. I chopped this all down, with bunch of flowers in left hand and secateurs in the right, and by the time I had finished giving it a good shake and a trim it was looking quite a picture again.

I thought about Mum and how she would like to see that I am caring for her plants.

I wonder whether Mum had known

I did the flower-picking on Thursday, my first full day in Norwich. On Friday it was a dull day, colder and windy so I spent the morning indoors, helping dad and making model houses, N-gauge, for my railway layout. It was while fiddling with the little houses that I first noticed dark red blotches on my arm. I suspected that it was due to an allergy to something that I had touched before breakfast. Was it the bleach, the glue, the washing powder or the lilies that grow beside the rose, that I tied back to stop it fluttering in the wind? I suspected at first it was the lilies or the bleach but the patterns on my arm indicated a more feathery plant.

An N-gauge village

By Saturday morning despite a day on Friday, of modelling and no gardening, and lashings of calamine lotion, my hand and arm were very red and swollen. And they hurt - inside and out!

I jumped on my bike and took myself to the walk-in surgery in the city centre. They confirmed a plant allergy and suggested anti-histamine, and to continue with the calamine. I was glad about that as the white, chalky zinc-oxide prevented me from seeing damaged skin and therefore I did not worry about it so much as I continued my work in the garden.

On Sunday there was no improvement, in fact I believe that it was worse, so I jumped on my bike once again and returned to the doctor. I was told to carry on with the same treatment, which in the end turned out to be the right thing even though at that time I did not know what the cause was.

I wonder whether when my Mum planted the rue in her garden she had known that not only is it a herb and a pretty cutting-plant but that it is also very harmful to the skin when combined with sunlight.

Rueing the day

I returned to Germany on the Monday, with my arm covered in calamine and protected with a sock and long sleeves despite the heat. As soon as I was home with access to the Internet I went Googling for names of toxic plants that cause skin irritations.

Out of a list of hundreds I discovered about twenty that grow in Dad’s garden, seven of which I had had close contact with, including parsley, parsnips, lilies, asparagus and potatoes leaves. 

It was not until I got to the R’s that I found the culprit – common rue! Rue, the plant that I had given a very thorough pruning with my right arm four days previously while picking a beautiful bunch of flowers.

My fast track course in photo-toxicology!

Before it reached its peak!

Yesterday

Today

What a great thing the Internet is. I was able to find out exactly what had caused the inflammation and blistering on my arm and was armed with both the Latin and German names when I turned up to see a German  doctor on Tuesday evening after work.

By this time I had a very red, swollen, blistering and throbbing forearm, a few red, blistery patches on my left wrist and some more on both knees!

At least I could now say with confidence what I thought was wrong with my skin. It looked like I had caught the lurgi, but I had in fact just rued the day!

I suggested to the doctor I had a photo-toxic reaction to Ruta graveolens –

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rue

So out came his iPhone and together we Googled Weinraute (Ruta graveolens). He agreed with me straight away, although he told me that the hairs of the processional oak-moth caterpillar can also have the same effect. However, I knew it was the rue.

I came away with cortisone and anti-biotic gel to rub in the “burns” and a week later a skin specialist advised the treatment to continue for two more weeks when a fatty cream can then be applied for many months to come. The specialist also advised 50plus sun protection cream until the spring, (I use this when I cycle anyway). I was told that those are second degree burns on my arm and that hopefully they will eventually fade.

On the mend

This drama all began over two weeks ago. My dad has since had the stitches removed from his hand; he is pain-free and is recovering movement very well. Yesterday was the first pain-free day that I have had since the red blotches appeared and the sunshine began to react on my skin, and today is the first day that I can type two-handed without tingling in my fingers and a burning feeling in my wrist. So it is time to get blogging again!

When I return to attack Dad’s garden again in September I shall certainly be wearing gardening-armour whenever I step outside the back door!

Notes

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rue

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phototoxicity

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytophotodermatitis

Lurgi— A nonsence word, Lurgi Strikes Britain, Goon Show, November, 1954

Joy in the natural world

'Peewit or plover'

'Hares galore'

'The april-showers that fortunately missed me!

On my bike!

It has taken me a long time to get my bike out of the cellar, but this year not due to fear –

http://www.susie-mallett.org/2011/03/fear_8580.html

It was the cold weather that put me off this year, and tiredness. I must be getting soft in my old age!

We still seemed to be in deep winter during the chilly days before I set off to England, with even some snow still fluttering down now and then. It was not at all the sort of weather to put me in the mood for a forty-minute ride to work.

As soon as I returned to Germany in mid-April I brought one neglected bike out of the darkness of the cellar and spruced it up for spring and prepared it for long journeys. Then I wrapped it up and waited for a bit of warmth in the air!

Watching the weather

Day-by-day I watched the thermometer before I decided what to wear. Early each morning I asked myself whether it would it be my nice clothes and a hop on the tram or my cycling gear and a hop on the bike?

It was not until Friday 27th, almost the end of April, that I took the plunge. The temperature rose from three degrees on Tuesday morning to twenty-three on Friday, so off I peddled. 

It was lovely to feel the air on my face and watch the countryside fly past. Even in the city, where I cycled down streets that I have not travelled since December, there were many changes to be seen.

I doubt that the temperature will stay in the mid-twenties for long but I think that the frosty mornings may now be behind us. This will probably be the last month in which I spend money on the expensive ticket for the public transport system, until I dig deep in my pocket again next December.

Watching nature

The trams and buses have been very busy over the past few weeks, some days on the return trip being full to bursting. It was therefore a real treat on Friday to be out in the fresh air communing with nature.

I love the extra time that I get to read when I travel on public transport, but I think that I enjoy even more the time spent communing with nature on my bike.

It is not only nature that excites me, I also enjoy all the action at the airport where I love to stop to watch the aircraft taking off and landing just above my head. I love to dream of being up there. I sometimes think about making a spontaneous decision to jump on a flight that would take me home for the day instead of to work!

I have not done it yet. Instead, as I did on Friday, I watch the herons fly to their fishing grounds, smell the spring in the hedgerows, hear the peewit or plover in the still short cornfield with the skylarks twittering above. At dusk I will stop in silence, as I did this week, in hope of catching the hares in action. Observing a spring boxing-match is a treat yet to come.

But does it change the brain?

Arriving at work with ten kilometres behind me by bike I do feel much wider awake than when I travel the distance by bus and tram. I wonder whether the clients would be able to tell. We shall have to put it to the test next week.

Cycling certainly does change my outlook on the day, my personality is transformed, and my soul is awakened when I commune with nature instead of with the inside of a tram or a bus.

PS

It took me the same length of time to cycle the distance as it did four months ago. The rest seems to have done me no harm at all and the bike seemed to manage it alright too.

Notes

More on the spring start to cycling – 

http://www.susie-mallett.org/2011/03/influence-of-weather-on-well-being-of.html

http://www.susie-mallett.org/2010/03/minus-four-still-no-sign-of-my-bike.html

http://www.susie-mallett.org/2009/04/story-of-red-and-yellow-tricycle.html

6.43 minutes

 "Thursday morning's playtime"

Mozart, Petö and singing souls

My adults’ group for multiple sclerosis listens, relaxes, and practises a soul-healing breathing rhythm, and some members even fall asleep while listening to 6.43 minutes of Mozart.

I put the CD with the Andante from Mozart’s Concerto No 21 in the player, begin quietly counting the 4/4 rhythm, talk them through a few deep breaths in time with this lovely music, then, I either take my own place on a mat on the floor or, as I did today, I rest my elbows on the table by the window, rest my chin in my hands and silently observe.  

Click here now to join me in listening to this Andante as you read the rest of this posting:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rR9HiVhhT8Q

I do not observe my adults’ group. I observe our lovely integrated Kindergarten children in the garden at play.

On Thursday last week it really made me smile inside and out to watch them. How lucky all these children are to be in this integrated group.

The scene that made my soul sing

A six-year old boy with muscular dystrophy, who by the way is Turkish, was pedalling away on a three-wheeler bike and was going faster than ever before because he was being pushed by a three-year old girl 

from Syria who has no disability. She is however very little!

These two were being chased by another six-year-old, this time from Greece, who was whizzing along behind like lightening in his manual wheelchair. Tomorrow he could be doing the same on his bike or on the bobby-car, but today it was wheelchair-practise day.

Bringing up the rear in this chase was a German boy who is six years old and has ataxia. He was following on a jumbo-sized blue bobby-car. Bobby-cars are made in Nürnberg so we have a great variety of them in the garage, some even have trailers and water pumps. Today it was one with go-faster stripes!

All these children completed their thirty-metre circuit at least three times while I had my chin in my hands happily listening to the 6.43 minutes of Mozart.

I have known the three six-year-olds for almost three years and it brought tears to my eyes watching them having such fun.

The German boy was so shaky three years ago that he could hardly sit on a bobby-car let alone whizz around on one.

The Greek boy had never sat on a bike, in a wheelchair or on a bobby-car when we first met, because nobody had expected him to be able to. Now he is walking around indoors with four-point sticks and singing Frère Jacques in four different languages, Hungarian being his favourite. Two years ago the powers-that-be wanted to stick an autistic spectrum label on this child. I think that we have passed that hurdle now.

The Turkish child, who was once so shy that he would clamp his hands over his ears so tight when we sang in the group so he could not hear, just in case he would be asked to sing with us, stood up in his crocodile costume two weeks ago at carnival and told us that there is a song about crocodiles. He was waiting for an invitation to stand in front of the whole group and sing it! I could not believe my ears when he actually did it. There are no hands clamped over his ears anymore.

Soon these children will be off to school

I will miss my 6.41 minutes of soul-healing observations of them through the window, just as I will miss them in our “Petö” group, as they call it. But I am sure our new children will bring me just as much joy as these three and their playmates have done.

Notes

Mozart - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, piano concerto no 21 andante (“Elvira Madigan”)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rR9HiVhhT8Q

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKZr3ExeXUc

PS

This Andante by Mozart is my favourite piece of music.

The version that I have was recorded on 12 June, 1989 at the Italian Institute in Budapest. That was just three months before I first arrived in that lovely city! The CD was given to me as a present when I first visited Germany in 1993 and I have been playing it in my MS group in every session for the past eleven years!

Jenö Jandó, piano

Contentus Hungaricus, consisting of leading members of the Budapest Symphony Orchestra

András Ligeti, conductor