This is the first time we've practiced in over a week. My dad was busy traveling and doing stuff last week, and the weekend before that I was getting ready for a convention. So I wanted to give him some stuff he's relatively familiar with at this point, because I didn't really know how well it would go after not having practiced for so long. Today we did some object cards and then some phrase cards.
He did pretty well on most of the object cards, and only really got confused or needed my help with a few.
He did really well with the phrase cards too, after a little bit of difficulty at the beginning. We started off with a picture of two kids dancing, and he told me "they are married" but then laughed at himself, realizing that that was pretty far from what he meant to say.
He got most of the cards pretty quickly, and doesn't seem to be having as much trouble with compound phrases as he used to. When I would show him a card with a sentence that was something like "she is watering the flowers" he used to start off with "she is......" and then get stuck, and not be able to finish the sentence, even if I said it and asked him to repeat it to me. Now he still frequently has trouble finishing the sentence the first time, but after I repeat it once, it isn't as difficult for him to finish the sentence as it used to be. I'll give him the rest of the sentence ("watering the flowers"), then ask him to repeat it, which he usually doesn't have trouble with. Then I would ask him to start back over from the beginning of the sentence ("She is...") and finish it. He used to get stuck there, even if I completed the sentence for him. Today, he still got stuck there, but all I had to do was give him the beginning of the first word ("wa....") and he would remember the rest and be able to finish the sentence.
I was really impressed by how well he seemed to do, since it's been so long since the last time we practiced.
Not related directly to today's practice, but still important: we had really close to a full conversation over text messaging this weekend! Which is really impressive to me, because he tells me he has difficulty with reading, and I know writing text messages is also difficult and time consuming for him. I'm just going to post the whole conversation here, so that I can look back at it later:
me: I love you
dad: How are you?
me: I'm good how are you?
dad: I'm good!!! I love you!!!
me: I love you too! Did you have a good weekend?
dad: Good!
me: Yay!
dad: And you?
me: pretty good!
dad: Yay!!!
He usually has difficulty making conversation, especially via text, so I was really impressed by how well that went.
And there was another thing about practice today that I thought was weird at first, but turned out to actually be pretty good. We got to a phrase card of a kid playing chess, and after he had figured out the sentence, he told me "yuck". I couldn't figure out what he meant at first, but after he went through a lot of words, he finally got to "Chinese" because the kid on the card was Asian. I was really worried at first, because since his stroke, he has acted really childish a few times, and sometimes said shitty things without really realizing he was doing it. I remember one time we were at the mall and he pointed at a lady and said "fat" and made a face, and I had to tell him that was rude and not ok. He felt really bad after though, and I know sometimes he just says weird stuff without thinking about it or realizing what he's doing (to tell us he has to go to the bathroom before we go somewhere or something, he never says "bathroom" he always says something like "pee pee", which is weird and embarassing, but I don't think he realizes it. And I know that "bad" stuff is the easiest to remember or the most common thing for people to say when they've had some kind of brain injury or other mental issue.). Even though he probably doesn't mean it, I always feel like I need to correct him on this kind of stuff, because he was never that kind of person before the stroke. He was really accepting of everyone, even if their views differed, or if they did something he disapproved of, (He was politically conservative, but never argued unreasonably with people who were liberal and even accepted and agreed with many liberal perspectives, and recognized that some conservative perspectives were very wrong. He was strongly Christian but had many books about and studied many other religions and loved talking about them.) and I have never known him to be racist, so I really felt like I needed to talk to him about this issue.
After I finally figured out he was talking about the fact that the kid on the card was Chinese, I asked if he had a problem with that and he said "yes". I asked why and he just said "yuck" again. I told him that was rude and racist, and he responded with "Nononono. Soccer" and gave a thumbs up. And then said "chess. Chinese" and gave a thumbs down. I asked him if he thought the card was racist and he said "Yes!!" Because out of all the cards, the only one that had an Asian person on it was someone doing something stereotypically Asian (playing chess).
I know he has these little slips from time to time where he'll say something rude and uncalled for, and it's always really upsetting to me, because he never did those kinds of things before the stroke. And I know most of the time he doesn't mean it, because he's a very respectful person. But it was really good to see that he can still realize these types of mistakes when other people have made them, and want to have a conversation about the mistakes, even if he sometimes doesn't catch his own.
I know that he's smart and that he has still retained much of the knowledge and attitudes he had before the stroke, and it's really good to see incidences like these that prove that's correct.