Thoughts from the Back Porch: By Sparklle SLP

Hello Doyle Speech Works readers. I am Sparklle SLP from Speaking About Remarkable Kids Learning Language Everyday. I am a school-based SLP, Mom, blogger and TpT author. I am always so excited when SLP bloggers visit each other's blogs so, when my dear #slpbestie Annie invited me to participate in her Thoughts from the Back Porch series, I was all hooves in (more on that in a moment). 

When I read Annie's first post in the series I totally related. 100%. While she works and resides in NH and I in OH, our school-based SLP positions have a trending theme. When Annie remarked, "I went through the proper channels and was effectively shut down" it was as if I was speaking her same thought, literally, roughly three weeks earlier when my own school year ended. I love how Annie is vowing to use a positive mindset with attainable goals in an effort to promote change.

I, too, have moved beyond the shut down. Summer is galloping on by and I am determined to not let it pass without soaking up loads of time with my own kids at home.  You see, for 9 months, I spend an enormous amount of time with everyone else's kids.  My chosen career fits me perfect. I love being a school-based SLP. I can use my creative, ambitious mind daily. Being a mom is no different and I am grateful to have the time off to enjoy my kids at home during the summer. Today, I'm planning to shed some light "literally" on thoughts and actions from my back porch.


I have three lovely, intelligent, creative, involved children of my own.  Today's post is about my middle child. She fits the middle child syndrome perfectly! She's independent, creative, can avoid work better than most, tends to enjoy her time alone, and will seek attention in ways that cause a few additional grey hairs. My #2 is incredible. She's like chaos flip-flopped upside-down with this amazing ingenuity and she's only 7!


For quite some time now, she's been into Breyer model horses and has taken over my husband's basement office to accommodate her stables, pastures, arenas, a tack room, a training arena, and a bunkhouse.  When we go shopping for groceries, we bring home boxes and they are quickly converted into horse accommodations. She uses a variety of office and craft supplies to create saddle racks, bridles, halters, lead ropes, feed buckets, wash stall supplies, and the like. She has master glue-gunning skills and popsicle stick engineering.  I bring in the lawn tractor (AKA vacuum) often to swipe up the debris.


I neglected to snap pictures of her before barns (insert sad face; however, she took video of the adventures of her horses). Below is the start of her hot walker (this is a new vocabulary word for me) and tack room.


     

When this girl gets an idea, she is on it like metal to a magnet. You will hear her feet pitter-patter down the steps and the rummaging begins. Last week, "wooden stables" was verbalized. Scrap wood was obtained. Power tools were plugged in. The adventure began. 

This SLP mom used her creative, organized focus to help the ingenius youngster to use her powers to design stables for her ever growing team of horses. 

We sketched, measured, cut,

     

nailed,

     

staged, reconfigured...

      

and now the designing is hers for the making.

     

These actions from my back porch, the perfect backdrop for quality time with my middle child, proved to be just what this SLP mom on summer break needed. Who would have thought power tools and hammering could relieve stress? Totally an added bonus. I am looking forward to witnessing her completion of these barns and the narratives that will follow.  See how the SLP in me still emerges in the summer!

What are your thoughts or actions from your back porch this summer?  Do they help you to rest, create, reflect, or enjoy?  Please share in the comments. Thanks so much to Annie for the invite and the prompt to share my stable story.