Getting Past the Stubborn

So all this angst about how Olivia will do at school without a Pull-Up is brought the real issue to the forefront.

What I really worry about is her communication.

See, she can talk. She really, truly can. And at home, she does. She talks to us all the time. She tells us what she wants, she shows us what she needs, she talks to us. Sometime, we wish she’d be quiet for five minutes so we can get in a word or four.

But at school, she doesn’t. She doesn’t talk, she won’t communicate in any meaningful way.

And that’s the problem. How can her teachers and therapists evaluate her if she won’t show them what she can do?

I think she’s much further along in most areas than they do.

This is not denial. I know, I know. A person who is in denial isn’t going to know they’re in denial.

Whatever.

I don’t deny that O has communication problems. But they’re not so much 5p- related as they’re shyness and stubbornness related. She doesn’t want to talk to her teachers and therapist and so…she doesn’t.

She doesn’t care about ‘rules.’ She doesn’t care that she’s supposed to talk to them. She doesn’t want to. She’s shy and she’s stubborn.

Alyssa is painfully shy but she’s also very much a rule-follower and so when she discovered that one of the rules for being in school is that you talk to your teacher if your teacher asks you a direct question, she talked. It’s just how she is.

Olivia? Thinks rules suck and so just doesn’t follow them if she doesn’t want to.

And there is the problem.

If she won’t talk to her teachers, how will they ever know how well she’s doing? How can they test her if she won’t show them what she knows?

I think this potty thing is actually turning out to be a great thing, because she so desperately wants to be a big girl. And part of being a big girl is going pee in the potty. And part of peeing in the potty while at school is TALKING to her teachers to let them know she needs to pee.

So it’s a step in the right direction.

I keep thinking that when my next meeting with her teacher rolls around, I need to talk to them about how we’re going to get O to WANT to show them what she can do. How can we get her to want to talk to them? How can we show the therapist how well she can actually do on the playground? Her PT thinks that she can’t jump two-footed off a six in curb because O won’t do it for her.

Damn it! She CAN do just that kind of thing. She just won’t do it for this woman that she’s known for about four months. For me? She’d jump all day long.

Do I suggest that I take her out to the playground and have them sneak around and spy on us playing so the PT can see what O can do?

But what is the good in that? She needs to be willing to do these things for the PT as well as she’ll do them for me. But again, that shyness and that stubbornness (she must get that one from Tom!) kicks in and she fights it. She wants what she wants and not what others want from her.

It’s frustrating.

But at this point, I’m still leaning toward another year of preschool. Even if she can do the things her teachers don’t think she can do, isn’t a big part of kindergarten based on communication? And if she won’t communicate, doesn’t that put us right back at the point where we’d be if she COULDN’T communicate with them? Is there really a big difference between can’t and won’t? Except that with won’t, if we can break through her stubbornness, we are leaps ahead of the can’t stage, right?

We’ll continue to praise her amazing pottying skills and reinforce how proud we are of her for telling her teachers when she has to go. Maybe all that positive reinforcement will make her want to communicate about other things too. It could happen. Though…yes, she is, indeed more stubborn than I am.