Categories...

On Wednesdays LMNOB'school does an early release.

She gets off the bus, crosses the street and goes to our daycare provider, M's, home, at approximately 2:30. Usually M has had the door propped open for her on Wednesdays, but this last Wednesday was fairly cool, and M got distracted, and forgot to prop the door as a result of both factors.

At 3:00, she went to take some diapers out, and lo! There was LMNOB on the doorstep. M felt horrible that she'd forgotten - and honestly I don't blame her at all, because it could have happened to me just as easily.

But what's off here is that LMNOB was just standing there...and had been for 30 minutes.

She wasn't distressed, she wasn't finding something else to do to pass the time, she hadn't wandered off.

Moreover, she had never even knocked or rung the doorbell. At age 6, this should have crossed her mind!

All I can do is thank God that nothing happened to her - but that is not sitting well with me. I want to prepare her and better equip her.

BT the OT wants to do some social groups with LMNOB, as well as some categorical associations type of work, and sequential patterning. I.e. find all the green shapes, or among varied shapes, find all of the rectangles. And then we'd break down tasks into step by step instructions, and she would order them correctly.

Because then we can extend that kind of rational thought process to "a shut door is still like an open door, however to walk through a shut door, we need to knock/ring the bell, wait for it to open, and then walk through."

I never imagined I would have to tell my above average intelligence daughter how to think with the aid of categories.