Color

Rachel has always liked color. When she was three or four she could name all the standard colors and definitely had her favorites (pink being the usual one). When she was in third grade she switched to a different school. Once a week I would go into the class to volunteer, usually at the same time, and I usually worked with the other students. One week I had a conflict and went in at a different time. Rachel was sitting at the desk with her work in front of her and the aid sitting next to her and both of them were looking frustrated. The teacher asked if I would work with Rachel on that particular day, so I went and sat by her. She was supposed to be doing color and shape flash cards. She had known these for years, so I was surprised that this was the assignment, but I asked her what the first one was.
 "I don't know."
"Yes you do, what is it?"
"Purple triangle."
"Good! Now what is this one?"
"Red."
"No it's not. You know what it is. What is it?"
"Yellow square."
"Awesome! Now this one."
"Don't know."
About this time I noticed that the teacher and all the aids were watching. We went through the other 10 or so cards fairly quickly, and then Rachel was free to play a game on the computer. After talking to the teacher I found out that they had been trying to do those cards with her for months, and she never had finished them all. Her IEP (Individualized Education Program) had said she knew them all, but when they tried to quiz her she just said "don't know" and so they kept trying to teach them to her. I think she was just bored. Once everyone knew she knew them (and she knew they knew) they quit trying to quiz her and she started answering when color and shape questions came up in her other assignments.

Recently we've had some new issues with color. A few months ago she refused to eat some of her food based on color. One day she wouldn't eat the beans because they were green. One day that's the first thing she ate because she liked green. One day she was eating cold cereal and ate each color separately, nearly refusing to eat the last color (It was really cute. She ate the pink and orange ones because they are "for princesses" and didn't want the others because they're "not for princesses." I can't possibly say how thrilled I am that she sees herself as a princess!!!). One day we had homemade chicken noodle soup with lots of vegetables in it. She ate everything just fine, but left the carrots in the bottom of the bowl. I'm pretty adamant that my children don't get to decide not to eat their vegetables. If it's one they don't like, just a very small portion is okay, but they have to at least try it. She's never had problems with carrots before (at least the cooked ones), so when she wouldn't eat them herself I got a spoon and stuck a bite of carrots in her mouth. She chewed them, but she wouldn't swallow them. I tried giving her a drink of water, but the carrots still stayed in the side of her mouth. None of this is that unusual, it's just extremely rare that it's based on color. If I let her refuse food every time she decided she didn't want to eat, she'd probably be hospitalized a lot of the time, so I kept trying to find ways to convince her to swallow (giving her something different to eat or drink and talking to her). Our efforts abruptly ended when she yelled something about "orange" and "bad" and spit the carrots in my face. She's never done that before and I wasn't sure how to properly show her that her behavior was unacceptable without overreacting, so I just sent her in to wash up and we went on with the evening. Her color eating issues only lasted a couple of weeks, and then they were gone (thank goodness! It's really hard to factor color into a menu when you don't know what the "color of the day" is, or even if the color is good or bad).  Then we moved on to dressing issues. One morning she refused to take off her pink underwear because she didn't have another clean pink pair to put on. It made her nearly late for school because I didn't want to start the day off just physically insisting she do what I wanted, and having a rational conversation where I present logical reasons and she changes her mind NEVER happens. Distraction works better, but it doesn't always work. Fortunately it did that day. I try to let her help pick out clothes, but she's not a morning person so it doesn't always work out very well. When I lay something out for her she sometimes gets part way through putting it on, and then decides it's the wrong color, but doesn't want to start getting dressed all over again. It makes for an interesting dilemma. Life's always an adventure around here. It's just never very rational.