It’s amazing how weeks of isolation had come and gone. We had dreaded the tedium of it, and in retrospect found them so fleeting in the course of our busy lives. The circuit breaker period in Singapore presented us with unique challenges and opportunities. We never had the blessing of being trapped at home 24/7 with 2 kids whose favourite activity was to whirlwind redecorate their room every morning. Still, with the extra pair of hands at home, we decided to embark on some serious stuff we’ve never been able to.
So here goes, in order of potential insanity risk to parents:
Indoor camping
We kind of figured that our 2 little Tasmanian devils were wrecking their lovely room each morning because they were kept in captivity too long. And it certainly isn't good keeping critters in captivity under the same set of routines. It messes up their bowel movements and brain functions and turns them rabid for muffins and maple-syrup-soaked pancakes.
So we drew a rope across their room, threw over some duvets, secured the corners to furniture legs, hung up some camping lanterns, packed in some mattresses and even turned on forest sounds on the iPad for a complete, artificial outdoor experience.
The campsite turned out rather well, and the 2 critters took to it like fish to water. Amos didn’t want to come out. He’d live his life in there if he could. And for what was intended to last only the weekend, the tent stayed up for a full week. At the end of it, the tent became seasoned with signs of habitation; an assortment of books, old clothes, toy weapons (as defence against wild bears) and even a full complement of crockery, utensils, plastic peas and carrots.
It was a resounding success because apart from the mess inside their tent, the rest of their room, including the toys corner, was intact for the entire week.
You could probably imagine the withdrawals when we started taking it down…
Learning to tell time
With more time at home, we figured it was time for this. Amos is 7, and if he’s going to learn independence he’s definitely got to learn to tell time. We reckoned it would be a long haul, so it was always better to start early. We got a clock with gears that make the hour and minute hands move like a real clock, which is an essential feature when it came to the reading of hours relative to the passing minutes. You can purchase it and have it delivered from most online platforms.
We expected a long process, but grossly underestimated the length and rigour involved. The usual methods of explaining the progression of seconds, minutes and hours proved far too complex for Amos. In the end we had to forgo teaching him seconds and spent a week just to have him memorise the clock hands and their clockwise movement; 2 weeks to have him recognise the lines marking minutes and numbers representing hours; and another 2 weeks to instil in him how 60 minutes made one hour. There was the occasional regression. The re-learning. The tedious, repetitive counting from 1 to 60 until he knew all the numbers by heart.
And Amos haven’t even begun to tell time yet.
For a start, Amos needed to be able to recognise first the key minute positions at 15, 30 and 45, and then everything else in between by 10-minute, then 5-minute intervals. Next came the painstaking process of reading hour-minute movements by 15-minute intervals and then breaking it down to 10-minute and 5-minute intervals.
We aren’t going to gloss over this. Over many weeks, the process of telling time was the source of considerable frustration and weariness. It turned out that Amos could read the hours off the clock accurately for the first 30 minutes. The hour hand positions beyond the 30-minute mark would drift too close to the next hour and completely throw him off. For another week we worked on that, and just when we thought that we had nailed it, Amos lost the ability to read hours off the first 30-minutes.
The regression discouraged Amos as much as it had discouraged us. He started losing interest, his eyes straying whenever we got him to learn the clock. He took to gross guesswork just to get out of the situation, or maintained a protracted, obstinate silence that boiled blood and popped veins.
Each session began with a recap of the fundamentals and ended with time-telling exercises—collectively lasting no less than 30 to 40 minutes. By the end of it, we were stoned and spent. Encouragement and rewards worked, but they could only take us this far. Done in perpetuity not only depletes resources but risks sensitizing him to rewards and having him wanting more.
Recently, with Amos having acquired some time-telling skills, we found that regular time-telling throughout the day worked better than structured sessions of intensive teaching. We’d get Amos to read off our wall clock every hour or so, and at random intervals to get him used to the hour-hand movements. For instance, 2.10, 3.20, 4.25, 5.30, 6.40, 7.45 and so on. You’ll get the idea.
He made mistakes along the way and regressed often. We’ve learnt to tolerate them and remind ourselves that he needed time and he was never in any real rush to master time-telling. And with a sprinkling of encouragement, Amos was mostly compliant whenever we got him to look at the clock.
It’s a long haul, but we’re making progress.
We are by no means experts in this. But for parents out there grappling with the means to educate kids with Down syndrome, we’d recommend not going into teaching time until you are fully prepared and committed to do so. The mistake we made was in leaping into it without preparing ourselves emotionally for it. We lowered expectations, but not quite low enough to have us exercising more love and patience than we had in teaching Amos.
Anyway, there are probably many parents out there who are doing a better job at this, so we aren’t going to bore you with the details. If you are one of us who are popping your veins and losing hair and sleep over the quirks and miseries of teaching time to children with Down syndrome, we hope you’ll find some tips and solidarity along the way and be assured that you aren’t alone. As we’ve advocated (often also as a reminder to ourselves), don’t forget to take care of yourself first. After all, a happy parent is an effective parent.
Being 7 years old meant that Amos has other milestones to reach. One of the big ones, as some of you may know, is night-time toileting. We made the other mistake of doing time-training and toileting together, and the ensuing frustration probably cost us a decade of our lifespan. So parents, unless you have nerves of steel and an eternity of patience, don’t ever try this at home.
We’ll leave this for the next post.
Meanwhile, take heart in whatever you are doing and keep at it!
Photo credit: shixart1985 from Foter.com