Swinging, Swinging

There's a song about swinging, based on a poem by Robert Louis Stevenson, that I sing to Joy & Rose, that my mother used to sing to me, that her mother used to sing to her. (In case you're keeping track, that would be Joy's great-grandmother, who is 99 years old and reads this blog regularly. Hi, Grandma!)

How do you like to go up in a swing
Up in the air so blue?
Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing
Ever a child can do!

Swinging, swinging, up in the air so blue,
Swinging, swinging, up in the air so blue!

Joy has (almost) always loved to swing. She's long outgrown the baby swing, of course, but we have photos where we'd put her in the chair and flipped the switch to set the thing rocking, and it made her so happy. Later we made copious use of the swings at the park, and Joy's occupational therapist taught us to swing her in a blanket, telling us that the swinging was useful input to Joy's vestibular system. Therapeutic and fun, too, what a package!

But then at Christmas 2007, Joy had a major regression and her internal swing switch flipped to the "off" position. We first noticed in a January therapy session. In December she'd practically begged for blanket-swinging, to the point that we were using it as reward; in January, she wanted nothing to do with it.

When spring came, we learned the extent of her new aversion to swinging. At the park, I couldn't even get her into the toddler swings that had delighted her so much the previous fall. At the zoo, her beloved grin-filled carousel rides had become occasions for strenuous complaint. She didn't even like the stroller rides back and forth walking her sister to school.

This lasted all the way to mid-September, a couple of weeks ago.

Then, apropos of nothing that we can identify, the switch flipped back "on".

Gleeful swinging at the park. Big smiles on the zoo carousel. Zero protests on the stroller rides. So much renewed joy!

What is it that flips her internal switches? It's been a useful metaphor for me lately in thinking about how Joy operates. This probably won't be the last time you find me using it.

Meanwhile, how do you like to go up in a swing, up in the air so blue?

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P.S. We're back from the northwoods. I'm saving the full detail for Special Exposure Wednesday, but here's a tiny preview... you can tell a lot about how the weekend went by the total number of seizures that Joy had.

And the number was...

ZERO.

Looking forward to sharing more!