Getting crafty with young adults

Trust

A lot of trust was needed with an athetoid client’s foot on the pedal when I guided material through an electric sewing machine, but it worked.

As you can see from the results above it worked very well, but unfortunately I had no hands free to take any photographs until we were finished.

While working at the sewing machine I sometimes found myself saying stop a bit louder than I really wanted to and I also had to quickly explain how going faster on a straight stretch is a bit like doing the same when driving a car and is not always the safest way. We decided to go slowly so none of my fingers got stitched to the fabric!

We found a happy medium along the straights and the precision and timing that developed when stopping and starting amazed even me. We became a very proficient team by the time we had produced, between us, a couple of stuffed toys as gifts for Laddo's young friends who now have babies and young children of their own.

Art work for young adults

Laddo is an artist, but just like me, he does not really feel like painting pictures at the moment. During my recent visit to work with him I could not really motivate this young man to do anything really except learn to ride the buses and trains preparing for a new three-hour journey that involved three changes. 

Laddo changing transport, from bus to train

He has astounded us all by taking that all in his stride, but he just refused to get interested in anything else.

Except that is for stuffed toys!

Here is something I made earlier!

When I arrived at Laddo’s house I just happened to have a couple of examples with me that had been made by our school children. The only time in two weeks that I saw Laddo’s eyes light up with just a small amount of interest was when I showed him these partly finished toys. He was hooked and he named a couple of people who he wanted to make some for.

It took Laddo a whole week to find the material he needed, all he had to do was to ask his Mum but he kept forgetting. Once he had it deciding what to draw on it was no great problem as he has been creating paintings with me since he was seven years old and he does not lack ideas. Once we had the material we were well away, but he kept forgetting it!

Lists and gentle reminders

Forgetfulness is a problem that often causes difficulties in Laddo’s life. He forgets just about everything, although these days he sometimes remembers what he ate for his lunch he still forgets to put on his shoes, load his mobile phone, put money in his purse and many other much more important things. Fortunately he does not forget everything that he has learnt, but he forgets all too often that he should actually use it all. He needs reminding, a lot! Interestingly he never forgets where he has to go on a bus or on a train. He does it once and that’s it he knows. For all the other stuff we write lists and stick them inside his wardrobe door!

There is often a big battle in his life at home and work because of his forgetfulness. Everyone knows what he can do and all have high expectations of him. Laddo just simply forgets to do his best most of the time, but then he suddenly surprises us all with his capabilities and knowledge, like when taking his tablets, and when using the sewing machine to make his soft toys and later using an ordinary sewing needle to sew up the gap where the filling went in.

I guessed he would manage the needle and thread as he had shown me earlier in the day how he can now pick up, with his index finger and thumb, the tiny tablets that he needs to take daily. Life gets easier for Laddo and more independent and luckily his tablets are one thing he never forgets so as he practises that movement everyday he can transfer it to other uses, like sewing.

A stitch in time

A colleague, from years ago, and I have both got tales to tell about athetoid clients who learn to sew. We are thrilled by the success that we have seen in this craft by several of our clients. It really is a sight to see and it is surprising how many athetoid clients I know who really do love to sew, girls and boys, men and women, and who are quite provicient.

Laddo is one of them

Laddo’s dad has a workshop and years ago in our early years of conductive upbringing Dad made Laddo a huge needle. He learnt to sew cross-stitch patterns and made these and threaded-bead pictures as presents for aunties, grandmas and sisters. It never was a problem for him learning which side of the cloth to work from, a problem that occurs more often with diplegic, and sometimes tetraplegic children. Surprisingly it did not take long before he could also hit the right spot on the fabric with the needle, despite his shaky hands, arms and body.

It is always such a pleasure for me to watch my athetoid clients sew.

Just a couple of weeks ago Little Princess completed a hand puppet completely on her own, sewing the two pieces together with only help to thread the needle. 

I watched her entranced!

Laddo needed a bit of help to hold the stuffed toy as he sewed the last bit by hand with a needle and thread, but the sticking in and pulling out of the needle he did alone. What’s more he only pricked his own finger once and mine only got pricked twice.

All in all he did very well and with a little bit of effort on both our parts we got enough motivation going to make the toys pictured at the top of this posting.

We were a bit limited for colours as many of our fabric pens that had been left in the cupboard unused for several years had dried up, but we managed well enough.

I am rather excited about seeing our client’s art work taking on three dimensions. I think we will all be doing a lot more of this! It is such a nice way for children and adults to produce something useful with their creative talents.

The weather......

"Summertime"
Sheringham, 2005 by Susie Mallett

... has for several days not been conducive to conduction

But the show goes on!

The 37° Celcius hot, humid days, often ending with a cooling breeze, thunder and lightening but usually no rain, go on and on and on.

We are not complaining far from it, especially after the long cold winter. I am loving the cycling with water bottles filled to sprinkle my arms and legs on the way to work and back again. To cool off in the groups either we sit at the table to paint or to sew, to eat and drink or to play games with our feet in buckets of cooling water, or we wipe ice-cold cloths over our arms and faces.

Hitzefrei!

Hitzefrei is when school is out early because of the midday sun. Mad-dogs and English-men may enjoy it but German school children certainly do not and sometimes they are allowed home earlier than normal.

"Today was Hitzefrei" said one of the eight-year olds last week " but that did not help me much" he continued, " as I had to stay on for the fifth lesson for French!".

Despite the heat and having to stay on until the end at school he and the others did their best and more in our conductive afternoon sessions. Achieving several more new "firsts" in the muggy heat.

One littlie is walking several steps alone now and another who trips over alot because he forgets to look where his feet are taking him, now walks along a three metre long and thirty centimetre wide bench, alone. (That is one foot by nine feet for those who are not yet metrically inclined). That is actually quite long and very narrow for someone who rarely takes a look at what his feet are doing.

He did not only do this dangerous feat once but four times, all in the space of two hours!

At first I was told:

"I can not do that, it is far too dangerous"

Then later I was asked:

"Can I do that again? It is really very adventurous and full of danger, spectacular like in the circus."

That is how my little client talks, he who is eight going on eighty! He who has word after word of wisdom and wiseness and one new achievement after the other. Two years ago he cried at the beginning of a "petö" session now he comes in raring to go, full of life and ideas.

Just this week he asked if he can come to me just four times in the summer holidays as he would like to make himself a pirate. A pirate that he can step inside and move around in! He believes four days will be enough time, perhaps he is right.

We shall see what develops.

I suggested he started to gather the materials he needs now. As we say in our group anything is possible we just have to discover how! That goes for building pirates just as it does for balancing on benches.

Hair raising expectations

"Favourite niece feeding Auntie's patient cat , alone!",
England, 1987

Sometimes I could almost pull my hair out!

I like my long hair so I resist, perhaps I could scream instead.

We conductors spend time with our clients, hours, weeks, months that add up to years, in this case already six, encouraging, motivating so that life can be lived to the full. Working together so that clients can take part in life with energy and gusto, with body and soul, as well as they possibly can.

Then what happens?

Sometimes along comes this professional and that professional who look in astonishment and disbelieve. Who with open mouths actually pronounce that they do not believe it, they can not believe their own eyes that this child is walking, that another child is in a mainstream school, that this adult is making phone calls again and that the other one driving a car. And what is more this often comes from people I thought know conductive pedagogy very well.

Yes, on the one side their surprise can be encouraging, indicating the success of our long years of intensive work together with the clients. I often think what luck that the clients and their families were working with us, all of us believing in, and working towards, a bright future, and that they were not working with those who did not.

But what does this open mouthed astonishment from professionals do for the clients?

Sometimes it can put the dampers on things

As I work with my clients we work on the assumption that the sky is our limit, we can have a go at anything and find a way to do most things the clients wish to learn.

If some other professional comes along and is astonished by the fact that the clients achieve their aims does this encourage or discourage? What influence does this have on their motivation?

In some cases it could motivate clients to achieve more, but in others it could have the opposite effect. Clients could say: “Well if this is not expected of me from everyone I will sit back and save myself the hard work, I need not expect it from myself either”.

What triggered this posting?

What has happened regularly but not too often throughout my career happened again a couple of times last week, once in a positive encouraging way and once in a discouraging way. It made me sit back and think and to decide that I must spread myself even further a field in an attempt to reach even more people who come in to contact with my clients. Raising the awareness and expectations of more people.

PS

There have been several cases in the past twenty years, all over the world, when people, who I thought knew conductive pedagogy inside out and even one or two conductors, have verbally announced their doubts and astonishment, often in front of the clients. In such cases it is I who am open mouthed and incredulous, left there thinking. “What on earth do people think a conductive upbringing is about when not full of high expectations and achievements, and why do therapists and pedagogues not all encourage such high aims and expectations in their clients?

Leaving my hair still intact and forgetting about the screams, I will instead be giving up the odd free Friday morning that I allow myself now and then, to visit our local schools and therapy centres!

Heute habe ich gegigert"

"Gigering"

(some years ago)

"Today I gigered"

Andrew Sutton has written a rather critical posting in "Conductive World” about the Giger MD therapy machine that he has seen advertised on the Internet. I would like to say something about this based on my own practical experience.

We have been using Giger for years in Boxdorf. One of the physiotherapists was trained on a short course in Switzerland in its use. This training really is necessary to ensure that the position of the client is optimal.

Representatives from the company selling it came to demonstrate Giger to us many years ago at our summer Fest and open day. I have a huge catalogue in English about it somewhere but the best way to find out about it is to use it and ask others who use it what they think.

I believe that the machine was originally created by the engineer husband of a lady with multiple sclerosis.

One of our very early “Petö” families discovered Giger and bought two, one for the adults in their family and one for the children, more especially for their child with cerebral palsy. They were so excited by its effectiveness that they organised the demonstration for us.

The charity that I work for here in Nürnberg consequently bought one for the physiotherapy department and it was such a hit that the parents of one of my Tuesday evening group donated a second. This was done with the understanding that their daughter would get to use it at least once a week in her physio-sessions.

Giger and me

I have dug out a photograph of me on a Giger out of my boxes of photos. It was taken when the demonstration was on at the Sommerfest. I kept going back for more throughout the day, as I felt so good having used it.

This was a long time ago now, too long to remember exactly, but I had probably cycled the fifteen kilometres to work on that day. I discovered that being on the Giger gave me the same invigorating feeling but after a much shorter time.

The people demonstrating the machines altered the position of my hands and feet and raised and lowered my upper and lower body. It was possible to feel the difference in the movement and which parts of the body were putting in most effort.

I found the experience very good, as did the physiotherapists and occupational therapists who were also queuing up to try it out. You can use it for many movements and I think that it is especially good in the lying position, using both arms and legs.

Interestingly, I was the only conductor there who had a go. And at that time there were eight of us! More than there were physios at that time.

The Giger Games

Many of the inhabitants of the residential home and the people who work in the workshop really enjoy to use the Giger in their twice-weekly physio-sessions. When I work in that department, and the clients are given the choice between rowing, CE, massage, magnetic-therapy bed or Giger, many, especially the younger ones, choose Giger. They seem to be almost addicted to it, really looking forward to a fix. For some it is the only time in their week that they move enough to work up a sweat! Perhaps the only time in their lives till now.

They are really highly motivated to "ride" and they concentrate intensely on their movements and speed. There is a screen that tells them how many rotations they have made, how many kilo-joules they have used and how much energy they have needed to do all of this. It is possible to change the gearing.

All of this is recorded each session in a huge ledger, which they can refer to on the following visit.

When the last Olympics games where taking place the physiotherapy department had their own Olympics. For the complete duration of the games for the disabled they had a “Giger Olympics”. Anyone could take part, including in their spare time, to try and break and set new personal records.

I would like to have a Giger for members of my MS and my stroke groups to jump on when they arrive a bit too early or when they have fifteen minutes to wait before they are picked up.

Advertising Giger

I have looked again at all the sites that Andrew has linked to. Yes, the advertising really is bad. The men who demonstrated to us were slightly better. As most of the people trying it out were therapists or pedagogues of some kind they didn’t really need to tell us much. We were finding out for ourselves.

There were also a lot of families with children with cerebral palsy at the demonstration. They were less convinced than we were, the parents put the children on the machine, many of the children were very young or had speech difficulties, so they couldn’t explain what they experienced.

In my opinion parents would have discovered more by having a go themselves.

My opinion

Both in my opinion and that of my Tuesday group (after-work group for adults with cerebral palsy) who use it often, the Giger does not improve movement directly. It does invigorate and, through the movement of both arms and legs, it makes you very much aware of every muscle in your body, especially when the hips are positioned slightly raised from the bench.

It is because of the precision needed in setting up the machine that training is necessary to use the machine with clients. It is important that they should use the machine regularly and learn which positions are the best for their particular needs.

Perhaps this invigoration brings with it renewed or indeed new body awareness and allows clients to be more active in their daily lives, in other situations.

I consider it to be the one machine (and there are several such machines in all physiotherapy practices) actually worth getting on for thirty minutes, three times a day, seven days a week. That is what I was recommended. Obviously, Giger's manufacturers want to sell these machines to physiotherapy practices, so they don’t advertise this point in the website. Physiotherapists in Germany usually only see their clients for twenty or thirty minutes, once a week.

Even so, the machine is worth using. If after using Giger clients can be more active and move more freely, walk or sit tall, then something has been achieved that could be cumulative with regular use.

Giger is not as bad as it first looks

As I was going back and forth looking at all the advertising links on Andrews’s posting I began to come up with more thoughts about it.

Because I know the Giger machine and I know of its uses, I did not at first see what had appeared so awful about the website. I am also sure from my own experience that it does do something positive but not necessarily what the website is claiming it to do!

It surely lets you know that you have got muscles. It even lets you know that there are unused muscles that you could perhaps start to use for something. It can show you how long your arms are and bring you to realise that you can stretch them to reach for something almost out of reach.

Maybe that is what horse-riding (another 'therapy') does too. It lets you know that your body is there and reminds you how you could perhaps use it in other situations.

A bit like cycling

For me it was like cycling. Only partly, because on Giger one uses the hands and the arms, but the feeling when you get down from it is like having cycled a very long way relatively fast.

People with disabilities who ride bikes seldom get that invigorated feeling. Their bikes are not usually set up in this way. Most bikes (or more often than not trikes) owned by adults and children with disabilities are set up for comfort and safety, not for dynamic cycling. Many adopt a strange body position on a bike that often encourages the use of spastic movements or already forming contractures and asymmetric postures. Giger can be set up to avoid all of this and get the client using the whole body symmetrically.

My bike frame was bought roughly to measure, the saddle is set to measure both in regards my leg length and arm length. This ensures that elbows, shoulders and knees are not over-stretched while pedalling, but stretched enough to give maximum power. I sit on my bike dynamically. This is how you are positioned on Giger too. It is quite easy once you have worked out what each client needs.

I do not know whether all physiotherapist do this.

From movement to activity

It really is a shame that the website is so slick.

It has been interesting to read, as I do not see the glossy advertising any more because I know the machine. I see what I know as a very good machine, much better than others that I have seen and used in physiotherapy departments. It is a machine that the clients love and are highly motivated to use. I often wonder why that is, because when set up correctly it is extremely hard work. This is probably the answer, they feel they are achieving something, especially afterwards.

I am convinced that it is the stimulating effects that bring benefits. It makes you aware of every inch of your body, like when concentrating on every stroke and consciously making exact movements when swimming.

On Giger, just as it is when swimming, I do not have to concentrate so much on making the movements but it is good to do so. When I get off the Giger I am very aware of my whole body, because I had been using my whole body. I feet inches taller and have a lively feeling, raring to go. This vitality lasts a relatively long time. It is this vitality that I believe to improve movement. It motivates activity, which of course will indirectly improve mobility.

Overall conclusion

Giger does not improve movement but its effects could motivate activity. This is what I see happening with our clients in Nürnberg.

PS

On this video promotional video from the GIGER MD, I noticed that there was a lot of “Petö furniture” in the picture, and parents with children sitting on their knees. I wonder whether this video had been shot at a conductive centre. I also therefore wondered why these children where not actually sitting independently on the Petö furniture in the picture.

http://www.cp-hotline.com/etreatment01.htm

The motivating pedometer

Northern Germany, May 2009

Last weekend I unexpectedly spent a couple of days with my young client in Northern Germany. Not a work visitbut a social one, which was nice for a change.

On the Saturday we had the whole day to ourselves, which gave us the opportunity to try out the new Schrittzähler (pedometer) that I had bought for him for his birthday.

We were very interested to find out how such a machine would work on the hip of a young man with athetoid cerebral palsy, on a body with lots of movements other than those that would normally be measured by a pedometer.

Auch in Deutsch

After breakfast we set about reading the manual. I had the English booklet and my client the German version. Between us it took less than half an hour to get it set up, to programme the time, the weight and step length of the user, and to set it up with a German voice! Yes it speaks too!

I was impressed with my own technical skills but I was surprised when my young man said that he was too and that until then he had not had much faith in my technical abilities. Now there's confidence for you!

I hadn’t been too worried as luckily there are five teenagers in the house who could have rescued us if the technical language had been too much for me!

My client was relieved and happy when eventually he had his new machine clasped to his jeans and it began to speak to him. He discovered the time, the temperature, his burn-off of calories, as well as the steps and kilometres that he had walked.

Now to put it to the test

What would this pedometer do with all his over-movements? The answer was nothing other than what it should do. It measured the steps forwards but also those backwards, which are often needed to retain balance, but it still worked, measuring only steps and no other movements.

So with the breakfast table cleared, pedometer securely fastened on hip, walking boots tied tightly, extra T-shirt on and windcheater fastened to the chin, we were off.

Off to the highest, windiest, southerly side of the village. It is part of our usual tramp. Always the first port of call is the graveyard where we admire the flowers and say 'Hello' to the Great Grandmas and Grandpas, the Omas and Opas who lie at rest there.

We now know that this first stage is 1000 paces, 0.6 kilometres, from home.

From here we continued on through our favourite wooded area, around the eastern side of the village, back down into the valley and up the other side. All this time the Schrittzähler was continuously telling us the time, the temperature, and the distance travelled! I worried that the battery would soon run low but I was thrilled by how motivating it was and how it brought a new dimension to our walks together.

My young client loves the countryside where he lives, often telling me how herlich (beautiful) it is. He asked, as he always does, why he had never come walking here before. He forgets that he couldn’t.

It is only since he trained so hard, nearly three years ago, to join in the marching on the weekend of the Schutzenfest, that he can now walk so far.

It really was beautiful

As I have never been here in May before it was probably also the first time that my client has walked these paths in May. The fresh colours were amazing, especially the yellow dandelions in the bright green meadows. These will soon be mown for fodder for the milking cows, who sadly live indoors.

We decided on taking the short cut home as it was nearly lunch-time. After lunch the pedometer was the motivation for a second round and we ended up with ten kilometres on the clock before it was time for me to catch the train home.

We had had a lovely day together and we are both thrilled to bits with the success of the pedometer. Especially pleasing is the fact that it has a loudspeaker which makes it much more practical to use. There is also a personal alarm which my client is pleased with as it will give him peace of mind if he is out walking alone.

Having seen this weekend how motivating using the pedometer is I am going to invest in another one to use with other clients. It is amazing how quickly the kilometres accumulate, especially just walking around the house and up and down the stairs. It was wonderful to see how motivating this is.

PS

In one of the photos above you can see my client, who was taking a rest after walking several kilometres, absently mindedly plucking at the petals of a flower.

How many of us do this?

We don't think about it. We just pick a flower and pull off the petals, sometimes at the same time saying the rhyme "She loves me, she loves me not".

Watching my client doing this just as anyone else would do it brought a lump to my throat. I thought about the hours that we have spent over the past eleven years, learning not only to walk, to drink and eat, to speak and sing, but also to pluck the petals from flowers!

We have also learnt to rock at rock concerts, swing at parties, cook dinners like on TV, paint for exhibitions and to march the surrounding countryside!

Notes

Schrittzähler – pedometer

Schutzenfest- shooting club festival, usually in July or August

Knautschi’s metamorphosis

Knautschi the caterpillar and butterfly

Knautschi has been accompanying us in our work throughout the past couple of weeks, actually ever since I found him in the streets of Nürnberg on May Day (first photo).

The children have learnt to love him.

Actually, with some it was love at first sight but with one little boy, who already has an ataxic tremor, it took a bit longer. He shook even more, with fear, the first time that he saw Knautschi. Now it is an altogether different story, he would love to have him by his side all day long. He strokes him and calls to him and practises his speech with him.

We need to hang up Knautschi as high as possible to prevent tiny fingers from tangling his strings!

Wakey-wakey, rise and shine, the morning’s fine

Each morning as we open the windows and let in the fresh, sometimes very fresh, air we call cock-a-doodle-do in the hope of waking Knautschi from his slumbers in his cosy bed on the wall bars.. He is difficult to wake, he sleeps very deeply.

Some days he is sleeping so soundly that, as we prepare to dive from our stools on to the carpet, all kitted out in our diving gear, we have to turn our snorkel into a siren and wake him with this.

Knautschi is a very sound sleeper. The children need lots of puff to get him out of his bed and into action but they are delighted because once awake Knautschi is immediately ready for play. He needs no time for eye-rubbing or for a cup tea. He hops down from his perch and is off on his rounds making everyone laugh.

He shows the children what he has been practising when they were away and then has a go at all the new movements that the children are trying to do. Sometimes he gets in a real tangle, which is when we get calls of “Knautschi come here. I will show you how to do it much better than that”.

The task that he has been best at was putting his hand in the small of his back so that he could pull up his trousers, if he had any! He taught all the children how to do it really quickly, faster than any conductor could!

Caterpillars, moths and beautiful butterflies

In the first days that Knautschi was with us we talked about how long he would remain a caterpillar and what and how much he would have to eat to grow enough to turn eventually into a butterfly or maybe even a moth.

The children were convinced that he would be a beautiful butterfly and not a moth but they were more interested in him remaining Knautschi the caterpillar, whose legs got in a tangle and sometimes even got stuck between the slats of the stools and plinths. Of course this required the emergency services to come out to his rescue.

Little hands made light work of the rescue operations and we could soon get on with our daily work, with Knautschi back safely on his mat, or back nibbling away at the children’s break-time snack. While he nibbled they discussed what was his favourite food, which was always a toss-up between luncheon-meat-with-cheese sandwich or sliced apple. They never wanted to collect leaves for him from the garden, they thought that their own food was the best for his development.

Metamorphosis

The metamorphosis of Knautschi wasn’t very obvious it was actually very sudden. Not at all like it would be in real life, as we would have had him out of action as a pupa or chrysalis for a day or two, too long without our Knautschi!
In this non-feeding stage of his development Knautschi would be undergoing a complete metamorphosis, resulting in a total reorganisation to form his adult butterfly body. As we needed Knautschi this amazing process needed to happen fast!

We couldn’t spare him, we needed him in our work, so we compacted Knautschi’s metamorphosis into just one night, while wrapped in a “leaf” in his wall-bar bed.

We didn’t talk to the children the day before about what may happen overnight. We had discussed caterpillars and butterflies with them during the weeks before and now it was to be a surprise.

And a surprise it was

The faces were a delight when on the last day of our block Knautschi no longer clattered along on his flat clumpy feet. He flew gracefully through the air, landing on heads and hands and smelling the flowers on the wall, and meeting other butterflies friends there.

It was magic

Not the metamorphosis. That wasn’t magic, that was hard work, as it is with the children too. It was, however, magic to see the children’s faces as Knautschi flew in for breakfast. They were fascinated. They called to him and introduced themselves to him. They held out two upturned hands for him to use as a landing place, at the same time making suggestions how he could practise flying and landing. They told him where he should fly to and what he could see in our room. Poor Knautschi ended up flying round in circles!

I can’t help thinking about and comparing Knautschi’s metamorphosis, his transformation overnight, with the changes that we have seen in the children during the past few weeks. They have really come on in leaps and bounds, and Knautschi has played a huge role in making their own ongoing metamorphosis a lot of fun.

They asked whether caterpillar-Knautschi will ever come back. A part of them was sad that he was gone, despite now having the beautiful butterfly fluttering over their heads. We assured them that the butterfly will lay eggs and we will perhaps meet the baby-Knautschis again in the next block

I had better get creating!

I wonder how much sadness there is for these children as their bodies transform and they learn to be more and more independent. Are they sad that they don’t need so much attention as before? Are they worried about being left alone?
Are the tears when asked today to do something that they learnt yesterday, tears of sadness because they now perform that task alone?

The happiness and joy of now being able to do something themselves always quickly returns when they are given the reassurance that we are there to help with the next, more difficult task to be learnt.

But this sadness is something that I have experienced often, sometimes children have even verbalised it. All these changes, the developments towards independence, also take something away. We must be sure to replace it with a different kind of care and attention.

Knautschi the caterpillar is gone forever

Just as we put on our thinking hats to plan each step onwards and upwards for the children, I now have to put on mine to begin creating the next generation of little Knautschis. Knautschi in the form the children knew him for a relatively long time is gone forever: the new form, the butterfly will remain. It will be this butterfly’s eggs that will become new Knautschis , and in turn will begin their own transformations along side the children’s next time we meet.

Notes

Butterfly was bought at Dinosaur Provisional Park -

http://tpr.alberta.ca/parks/dinosaur/flashindex.asp

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

References to Metamorphosis and Conductive Education-

http://www.abilities.ca/health_activity/1993/09/01/conductive_education_1/
“And how can anyone argue with results? Before our eyes, children with cerebral palsy underwent an incredible metamorphosis from total immobility to walking with canes. We were told how it works. We were told why it works.”

http://www.movementcentre.ca/newsletter/newslettervolume9no1.pdf
“Like the butterfly, the logo is the representation of metamorphosis.”

Susie Mallett

http://konduktorin.blogspot.com/2009/02/conductors-clothes.html

Painting the space I work in

Looking out of our "extension" the wide, wide world outside, 2004

They all came to "play", the farmer with his sheep, the fire brigade, the police and the Knights of the Round Table, 2004

Adapting our environment

Over the years I have had several chances to put my artistic talents to use in order to adapt or change the environment that I work in as a conductor.

One previous project was to paint a house on a wall in one of our work rooms. I placed mirrors in the lower windows that we use with our younger children during the standing and sitting programmes. The flower beds in front of the house are alive with wildlife, all sorts of creatures to be indentified and mimicked.

Another project, in my opinion the most successful, was in a room in a cellar. The room is small and dark, with only two tiny windows up high near the ceiling. its walls, where not covered in shelves and wall bars, were painted a very dingy grey.

A colleague and I often used this room for the oddments of work that we did between groups, after school, or whenever the two main conductive session rooms were in use. Neither we nor the children much enjoyed being there, and we were always pleased when summer came and we could take our work outside.

Building an extension

We needed to do something to make the winter months more bearable and to give the room a new dimension. My colleague's one and only wish was that we should make the room look bigger.

What we needed was an extension, and all for the cost of a tin of paint!

I took myself off to the tropical plant department of the local garden centre and took lots of photographs of the conservatories and greenhouses on sale there. I even sat myself down in a gorgeous rocking deckchair and did some sketches.

After weeks of planning and measuring, and doing some drawing on an unusually large scale, it was time to get out the paintbrushes.

I received help from colleagues and clients with the initial covering of the wall to be "extended", with huge areas of colour, but after that I was mostly alone Even now I still add bits and pieces with the help of my clients if they have the urge to do so but initially putting in the detail was more or less down to me. It took me hours, hours that I spent alone in the cellar, after a busy day of work, feeding my soul, relaxing with a paint brush, and creating space!

You can see in the photos above the result of the research and the hours of wielding a paintbrush. You can see what happened to our cellar!

Letting in the fresh air

This cellar became a place where we could open the door and let the fresh air flow in. The cellar got new windows to let in the sunshine. We now had fields outside to go running and walking in, and further away hills and forests to tramp through.

We had a field were a visiting circus would camp and a hillside that could be used by the villagers as the site for their Sommerfest. There were winding roads where accidents took place and the ambulance and police would arrive.

When I work in this room I plan craft projects which last for the whole of the time that the children attend a block. They choose a theme themselves and we create anything and everything around it. We try to incorporate the scene “outside” our room so we can step outside the conservatory doors into the green world beyond.

We lift our arms to stick our flower creations on the wall, we climb up ramps or steps in order to place birds on the highest branches or a police-helicopter in the sky, we crouch down to paint new leaves on the plants and to place things on the floor in the house.

The new extension to our room did more than just make things more bearable. It makes life in the cellar fun.

It also all makes my work a lot easier. We can let our imaginations run wild.

You’re the tops!

My top collection, 2nd March 2009

Grandparents, they are so valuable to so many families.

This is a short posting just to show how the whole family learn from each other. To show how Grandparents can practise their own fine motor skills and at the same time become motivators, facilitators even become “conductors”.

We had my whole collection of spinning tops on the living room table as a special request from Granddad, who had so enjoyed playing with the few I had taken with me the week before. Motivated by his grandparents' enthusiasm my young client learnt how to spin many of the smaller tops that he, just last week, had refused to even take in his hand.

The grandparents were so excited by the “newly” discovered activity that they took the whole collection home (upstairs) on two evenings in order to “spin” some more on their own.

Who said you can’t teach an old dog new tricks?

Grandma came with great pleasure and pride to tell us that she had learnt some new spinning top tricks, which of course in turn motivated my client to have another go at spinning the more difficult ones.

Sometimes, no, I should say very often, my work is delightful, I teach not only the child but the whole family so they in turn teach each other and the child. I find it particularly rewarding when it is the grandparents who are learning new tricks and I love to take a step back to watch the knock on effect in action.

Note

You’re the top -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YCAKX8pl0U&feature=related