Acting as translator
Yesterday our church hosted a block party for the neighborhood. Food trucks, carnival games, line dancing... it was quite a blow out party. We had brought Aster since she couldn't stay in her crate quite as long as we were going to be gone, and the whole thing was outside. Having a cute puppy in tow is kind of an instant ice breaker. At one point, I had Aster on the leash and several of my children were standing with me, including R. Our senior pastor comes up to say hello, and to pat the puppy.
Now, first you need to know that R. has never met this man in person. Being the gregarious child that she is, she immediately says hi to him, and he says hi back. R. then blurts out, "You in movie!" There is a pause, because it was a fairly random comment, and our brains were working to process the statement. As he chuckles because it seems that she is telling him he is a movie star, it dawns on me what her real meaning is. (I've had a fair bit of practice at this.) She is trying to say that she has seen him on a screen at church, because there have been a few times where the sermon is simulcast to all the campuses at once, and when this happens, often it is the senior pastor who is speaking.
But we weren't done. Having all reached stable ground, R. then makes another announcement. "You water big head!" Our first attempt at this one was that my daughter was telling the senior pastor that he had a big head. Ah, one of those proud parenting moments. R. must have realized that we didn't actually discern her true meaning, because she repeated, "You water head movie!"
The light then dawned. She was trying to tell us that she had seen the senior pastor perform baptisms at our big all church stadium service last month where there were screens up so that every one could see the baptisms as they went on. When I acted as interpreter for this last statement, R. nodded in agreement.
This child surprises me sometimes. We can go for weeks at a time with her seeming to not take in a single thing around her. Both working memory and long-term memory are significant issues for her. When you combine that with her ongoing tendency to disassociate, her grasp of what is happening in the present moment, or to be able to recall it even moments later is severely compromised. It can be a struggle for everyone.
And then she does something like this. The stadium service was a month ago. She has never met that pastor in person. And yet, here she was remembering something and someone with absolute clarity. If most of us are jagged in our abilities, her jaggedness is the equivalent of Mt. Everest and the Mariana Trench. There is something going on in that head of hers somewhere. We've seen other moments of her remembering and processing on a level that completely blind-sided us. It doesn't happen very often, though. It does show that there is more going on in there than meets the eye. If we could just figure out how to reconnect the broken or missed connections, calm the over-active parts of her brain, and activate the under-active ones, I have no doubt that she would astound everyone.
And so I continue to read neuroscience books. You have no idea how tightly I cling to the idea of neuroplasticity. There has got to be a way to reach the child hidden away inside that goofily organized and surgically injured brain.
Now, first you need to know that R. has never met this man in person. Being the gregarious child that she is, she immediately says hi to him, and he says hi back. R. then blurts out, "You in movie!" There is a pause, because it was a fairly random comment, and our brains were working to process the statement. As he chuckles because it seems that she is telling him he is a movie star, it dawns on me what her real meaning is. (I've had a fair bit of practice at this.) She is trying to say that she has seen him on a screen at church, because there have been a few times where the sermon is simulcast to all the campuses at once, and when this happens, often it is the senior pastor who is speaking.
But we weren't done. Having all reached stable ground, R. then makes another announcement. "You water big head!" Our first attempt at this one was that my daughter was telling the senior pastor that he had a big head. Ah, one of those proud parenting moments. R. must have realized that we didn't actually discern her true meaning, because she repeated, "You water head movie!"
The light then dawned. She was trying to tell us that she had seen the senior pastor perform baptisms at our big all church stadium service last month where there were screens up so that every one could see the baptisms as they went on. When I acted as interpreter for this last statement, R. nodded in agreement.
This child surprises me sometimes. We can go for weeks at a time with her seeming to not take in a single thing around her. Both working memory and long-term memory are significant issues for her. When you combine that with her ongoing tendency to disassociate, her grasp of what is happening in the present moment, or to be able to recall it even moments later is severely compromised. It can be a struggle for everyone.
And then she does something like this. The stadium service was a month ago. She has never met that pastor in person. And yet, here she was remembering something and someone with absolute clarity. If most of us are jagged in our abilities, her jaggedness is the equivalent of Mt. Everest and the Mariana Trench. There is something going on in that head of hers somewhere. We've seen other moments of her remembering and processing on a level that completely blind-sided us. It doesn't happen very often, though. It does show that there is more going on in there than meets the eye. If we could just figure out how to reconnect the broken or missed connections, calm the over-active parts of her brain, and activate the under-active ones, I have no doubt that she would astound everyone.
And so I continue to read neuroscience books. You have no idea how tightly I cling to the idea of neuroplasticity. There has got to be a way to reach the child hidden away inside that goofily organized and surgically injured brain.
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