Two New Languages

Ellie had a little tickle in her throat last week and was having a some trouble with it as she and Paul were walking at the park on Friday night. "Give a big cough, just like this," Paul directed, demonstrating. "Is that better?"

"Si, un poco," Ellie replied. (Yes, a little.) Like it was nothing! Just . . . Spanish! For fun! Bless her heart.

But that impressive display was the lesser of Ellie's two big accomplishments in expression for last week. When it's time to color, she scribbles in the middle of the page for a while and then is "all done." Her OT believes that this is because of Ellie's fine motor weakness; holding a pen or crayon properly and carefully drawing lines or coloring in entire pictures is hard work for her. But during their session on Wednesday, Carmen asked Ellie to draw a picture of herself. As usual, Ellie started to scribble.

Carmen gave her a new sheet of paper and said, "You need to start with a circle for the head."

For some reason, that really "clicked" with Ellie. She drew a head, hair, eyes, nose, arms, and legs, explaining each piece as she drew it. Amazing!