Safe

One of Corinne's favorite play themes is of being safe. It started after we watched "A Bug's Life", where she took an instant fascination with the ants running and hiding in their ant hill to escape the evil grasshoppers. She likes to build "homes" for her animals. These can be out of blocks or legos or rocks (if you're lucky) or more difficult to work with mediums such as play-doh or sand or leaves. She is a demanding perfectionist of a foreman with a few non-negotiable requirements for these homes. They must have a roof, they must have no visible openings (i.e. windows) and they must have a door that can be closed completely. Once the home is built to her specifications (which often result in high levels of frustration on the part of everyone involved), she fills the home with her favorite animal friends du jour, declares that "so and so is nice and safe in here now", and squinks* herself silly. Then that's pretty much it for the game. The friends don't come out of the home and no one else is allowed in, no matter how much they knock. That feeling of safety is really all she was going for, and now she has attained that, she can just sit back and revel in it.

Well, the other day Denise, her service coordinator, playgroup aid, and developmental specialist extraordinaire was trying to build upon this theme a bit in the spirit of DIR/ Floortime, and asked Corinne what made her feel safe. Corinne responded enthusiastically and without even a moments hesitation, "Momma!"

Momma makes her feel safe. I mean, does this seem like a fairly abstract concept for a three year old? We all know that it's what is at the root of a young child's love for a parent, but how many kids actually realize this? I don't know, maybe it's just me thinking my kid is the smartest, most clever kid ever. Either way, it made my day.








* If you don't know what a squink is, you must not have met Corinne yet. Some call this type of behavior "posturing", "stimming", "flapping" or "stereotypic behavior". But Corinne, in her infinitely unique way, has her own version of it where she clenches both fists, arms rigid, and makes a strange facial grimace. She does it when she is very stimulated, excited or has accomplished something. She's been doing it since she was a baby, long before any diagnosis, which is when we gave it its innocent name. Squinking is so much a part of who she is that all her providers and doctors now refer to it as squinking also, like it is some sort of official medical term. We're kind of proud of that, in a strange sort of way, like maybe we should patent it.