“Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles!”

            So sang Motel, the tailor, on the day he became engaged to Tzeitel, from Fiddler on the Roof.  I haven’t gotten engaged (for heaven’s sake, I’m still underage!) BUT some of the problems we were having look like they are going to be healing themselves!  Well, we still need to do some work solving them, but, things have definitely taken a turn for the better.  Last week, we were worrying about one very enthusiastic kid who managed to scare off the other children.  Well, the new child in our class (I wrote about him last week as well) LOVES it!  Those two were chasing each other around and playing with each other and not scaring each other off!  It is still a very good idea for them both to learn some boundaries and body language, but now they both have someone who is at their social level to interact with!  It’s amazing that that happened right when we needed it!  We will be monitoring their interaction, but this is definitely a step in the right direction.

            Big step in gracious professionalism on Thursday – I had stayed up ridiculously late on Wednesday night to finish some homework.  As a result, I was equally as ridiculously tired on Thursday.  I had to concentrate on every word that was spoken during the meeting to keep myself from falling asleep, but I had a commitment, and I had already missed far too many days at my internship because of my weak stomach, and I stayed.  I was uncomfortable, but I kept my commitment.

            One thing that did make me feel better on Thursday was my interaction with the twin boy.  Wendy had him in her lap and instructed me to sit a few feet in front of them and roll the ball to him.  He would grab the ball and roll it back (and in the process whacking Wendy in the face every time he lifted the ball over his head to generate the power to send it back my way!).  We continued this over and over again, and it was so uplifting to see the boy smiling and throwing a ball almost like other boys his age because of our teamwork.

At this point, I was sitting near the end of the slide in the motor room.  When Wendy took the twin boy away, I looked up to see his sister perched at the top of the slide.  She caught my gaze and slid down, then ran to me and gave me a big hug and proceeded to lead me around the room, passing balls back and forth and pushing carts around.  I suppose that at that moment, I understood how far I had come since the beginning of the year that I was able to work with this girl, and how much more I could learn.  If I were in a book or a movie, some literary analyst would say that this was a “turning point,” or at least a “defining moment” for my character, I think.  I love working with these kids more than I can ever write, and I am so grateful that I was given the opportunity to form a bond with the twin girl.

My goals now are to see what I can learn from the interactions between the two sociable boys and the twin girl, and (long term) to make a lasting difference in these children’s lives, if I can.

I can’t believe I got sick again.

            By now I’m sure you’ve noticed that I catch stomach bugs very easily.  That is actually true of my whole family – two years, ago, we all had Norrovirus, and ended up just giving it to each other again and again for almost two months.  So, I got sick again, and had to miss Thursday.  And right before Spring Break too!

            Ugh.

            All of this keeps making trouble for my time management.  Although I always make up for the work that I have missed, it does make the stress a little heightened on the days that I do it.  I don’t suppose there really is any way to stop myself from getting sick, aside from the obvious – good hygiene and diet, lots of rest, etc. – but it is still rather frustrating.

            On the other hand, it seems as if the twin girl is doing very well – she entered the castle-fort in the motor room today without requiring me to come with her, although she did glare suspiciously at another student when he tried to follow, and marched right back out to where I was.  I went in with her, but I was very glad that I was able to see her changing limits.  One of the specialists complimented me on my handling of the various situations that arise around this one girl – I suppose this can fall under job-specific skills, although it has been a much more gradual process that many other skills that I have written about in the past.

            I also learned today that we are going to have another student entering the class after Spring Break – another Indian boy, and by the sound of his name, his parents are from Central India, most likely Western.  Because of this, I might be able to understand some of what he says, and figure out some of his speech patterns (as these are very indicative of thought processes, and it is VERY beneficial to know what is going through the kid’s head).  Then again, he might be raised with a language I have never heard before, or he might even speak only English, or have very little language at all.  If I am able to interpret some of what he says, however, I will be able to play my part in teamwork, so that the specialists can pick up on these patterns, as they most definitely would know better what to do than I.

            Lastly, we’ve got some problem-solving to do.  One of the kids is very open and social – however, in a class full of parallel-players, his advances mostly frighten the other children, and he cannot read their body language and chases after them when they run away.  We think that creating a “social group” (or a class of sorts full of kids meant specifically to expand their social skills) might help him understand the other children’s boundaries, but we don’t have enough kids to work with who we think will thrive in a social group to form one.

            So, for this week:  my short term goals are to help figure out how to deal with the sociable child’s enthusiasm that so sadly goes unreciprocated by the other students and to keep up my work with the twin girl.  My long-term goals, again, are to make a permanent difference in these kids’ lives in what ways I can.