I first met Lulu with her mum when we were waiting to collect our children from school.

When her mother discovered that I was a registered child minder she asked if I had a space for her daughter ( I did).

Lulu’s mother asked me to treat her the same as I would any other 4 year old and not to make allowances for her special needs( I admit that I did think this sounded harsh at first), but I soon realised that she was doing her best to get her child to cope in ‘the real world’.

Lulu was a delight to look after and the other children loved her too.

Her favourite thing to do was to sing and dance; so we spent several hours each week doing this.

As Lulu had a limited vocabulary she used Makaton (read more here) to back up her communication.

I only knew the very basic signs, such as thank you, so Lulu’s mum had written a few signs down for me.

At lunch time when I gave Lulu her bag of crisps that her mum had sent in her lunch box, she put her thumb amd index finger together on one hand: To make a circle then put the index finger of her other hand in and out of the circle. I had no idea what this meant and couldn’t see anything like that in the signs her mum had given me.

It wasn’t until Lulu’s mum arrived to take her home that I discovered what she was trying to tell me.

Just like children sometimes make up their own words for some things, Lulu had cleverly made up a sign for what she called “Dip, dip.”

It meant that she wanted some tomato ketchup to dip her crisps in.

Her poor mum said that she felt like the worst parent ever as Lulu always enjoyed dipping her crisps in the sauce.

The following day when I was giving the children a biscuit Lulu signed “Thank you” to me and I gave her a thumbs up to say she was a good girl, another child asked why we did this, I explained, rather poorly that Lulu used signs because here ears didn’t work properly. This child spent the rest of the afternoon staring at Lulu’s ears.

One afternoon I only had Lulu to take care of and as it was a nice day we took a walk into town, after taking her into the pet shop where she enjoyed seeing the rabbits and guinea pigs, we went into a stationery shop as I needed to get a birthday card; there was an elderly woman also looking at the cards and as we passed her Lulu stretched out her arm wanting to see the card that the woman was holding. She kindly showed it to Lulu who then pointed at more and more cards that the lady kept showing to Lulu while telling her about each one. I swear that if I hadn’t insisted that it was time to leave the shop we would still be there now with that lovely woman!

Lulu is a fine young woman now, who I still see from time to time when she is out with her family.

Read more on working with special needs children here

As always questions, comments and topic suggestions are welcome.

Until next time.

Karen

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