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I am so open to the possiblity that there might be a different way to handle the replace-the-iPod issue than what I have been able to come up with on my own.
Here's the situation, if you are seeing something I am not, then by all means please let me know! That is why I am here!
Hilde's little sister, I'll call her Joy (because she is a very joyful child and brings me much joy in spite of her issues...Hilde btw means fortress), is 10 years old. I have had her since infancy. She is multiply-handicapped: blind, language processing disorder, has something that looks a lot like autism but is not, developmentally delayed.
She did not break the iPod out of meanness, but just being who she is, and I was supervising her and did not see her do it, but she put it in her mouth. The reason she had the iPod was because we were cleaning the church and Joy is not able to participate in that activity. It is just beyond her. So she sits and listens to her MP3. But, her MP3 mysteriously stopped working a few days before. So Hilde was kind enough to allow Joy to borrow her iPod while we worked at the church, otherwise Joy would not be able to sit quietly and wait while we did our work. Of course, this kind of generous sharing with family members is a behavior I want to reinforce.
Joy did not really realize, I strongly believe, that putting the iPod into her mouth would ruin it. It is sensory for her. I was supervising her and did not see her do it, but I am pretty sure that is what happened. I did not have my eye on her every moment.
Joy has a few dollars of tooth fairy money. When our car broke down she offered me this money to "go to the Kia Store and buy a new one." Her thinking is still very magical and also very concrete and rigid. She would totally NOT grasp the concept of earning money to replace the iPod. And even if she did, I don't know what she could do to earn the money. Her household chores are to put her own clothes in the laundry hamper, give out napkins to everyone at meals. We are still working on toileting and we are working on teaching her to take the recyclables to the recycle bin. It took a year to teach her to take things out of a container when she was a toddler. These things do not go quickly.
So that is where I am coming from. I don't think I left anything out. Is there something I am not seeing?
Thanks!
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