Learner's Permit

Emma has been spending a lot of time in her power chair now that we have the fancy new minivan to help transport it.  She is getting really good at driving it and I've started to let her drive herself around indoors in areas where there is a lot of room - like Target, hospitals, the mall, etc.  These are harder areas to navigate since there is not as much room for error as there is with the great outdoors and Emma is rising to the challenge.

Here are some videos taken of her driving.

The first one is from April and we were in Target.  You can see she isn't driving much and had a harder time hitting the switches in her head rest to move the chair.  We adjusted the head rest a bit and it helped her get better with driving.

The second and third are of her driving in the hospital hallway while Julia was doing a physical therapy session.  As you can see she is doing much better and is interested in getting up close to things and touching them.  In the one video she stopped at the wall and touched it and the railing.  She is very curious about touching things since she now has the power to do that in her power chair.  I had no idea she wanted to touch so many things or I would have had her touching things before!

I have more videos of her outside but the computer is slow today.  Right now we are at the point where she can drive from the back of our driveway to the front.  This is major progress.  She also has been driving around outside near the kids when they are playing without running them over (mostly....I keep the kill switch close at hand to ensure no casualties!).  The one thing she keeps wanting to do is drive out in the street so we are working on teaching her no street.  It's funny - she is going through the same stages using her power wheelchair that toddlers go through when they start to walk.  They bump into things and learn how to avoid bumping into things.  They try and run in the street and {hopefully} learn not to go in the street.  They run away when parents tell them to come here and Emma is doing all of this.  When it was time to come in the other day and Chris told her to drive to the back of the house Emma drove in the other direction because she didn't want to come in!  And she gets mad when we take control of the chair to move her somewhere she doesn't want to go.  Emma is starting to get the hang of navigating herself in this world and it's so wonderful to see!

Of course, when there are people to be watched she often comes to a dead stop to observe all the going ons but even that is starting to get better, too!