Fear and other emotions

     So today after class, her teacher approached me.
The first thing out of her mouth was "I know this is a small issue, but I thought you'd want to know."

Seriously?

Seriously???

This is a fantastic thing!!! The old school didn't even bother to tell me about major issues like her hiding in the playground instead of going into class. I am super-happy that the teacher has told me about today's issue, regardless of how small she thinks it is.

    Before school (in the few minutes between me dropping her off and class starting), she found a basketball on the basketball court and started playing with it. A bigger boy came up to her (he's a known school bully, and apparently quite a nasty kid) and said "That's my ball, give it to me NOW." Madd being Madd, wasn't intimidated at all, and said quite frankly, "No, I found it here and I'm playing with it."
They started pushing and shoving each other to get the ball. Teachers saw it, and intervened before any damage was done. It turned out the ball did belong to the boy, but there was no apparent reason for it being left on the court unattended.

    The teacher was quite worried, because the boy could have seriously hurt her. The teacher was surprised at Madd's tenacity, and said that most kids would have backed down and given the ball over if they were stood over by a much bigger kid.
As I explained to the teacher, that's all part of Madd. She doesn't have any immediate fear of people. She has no idea about giving people space, and wouldn't have thought to back down. Had the teacher not told me about it and dealt with Madd's feelings about it, I would have copped an afterschool meltdown. But the teacher recognised that Madd, despite not backing down, was feeling stressed - and she spoke with Madd at length.

Another example of how Madd's atypical behaviour can be dangerous to herself. If the boy had hit her, she would have hit him back. She never backs down.

Madd has made a couple of friends since she started at this school. She connected with one girl immediately - this girl N has been great with Madd. It's not often that Madd instantly bonds with someone.

The other kid is a boy who's a couple of years older than her - I'll call him B, for privacy reasons. B has severe Cerebral Palsy, and is in an electric wheelchair. He has lots of gadgets on his wheelchair, like buttons that can be pressed with his head to make his communication device speak for him. He can say "Hello" by pushing a button with his head. The teacher said Madd is very interested in the bits and pieces on his chair, and she's always chatting with him.

I'm glad that I've raised a kid who doesn't see a kid with a disability as "abnormal". To her, he's just another kid. She doesn't have "tolerance"... it's not about tolerating him. She doesn't seem to realise that not everyone is as accepting. But that stems right back to her coming with me to volunteer with Yooralla. I worked with an older Italian man who had Muscular Dystrophy. She used to chat away to him, and she got to understand quite a lot of what he said. She is also exceptionally good at lipreading, since I started chatting on video chat with a young guy who has an SCI (spinal chord injury). My mate with an SCI can't speak, so to chat with him you have to lipread him. Madd's become quite good at it.

So I'm very happy with her at the moment, she's been super-calm since the change in schools.