they're unique!

This is my first time to interact with special needs children at such close quarter. Personally, I feel that the school has been putting a lot of afford in guiding and cultivating these students. Students with special needs have to be reared with great attention and care by parents and school. This program has been conducted to let these two main parties to works together to assist the children with special needs better. The talk given by Min See gave me a new idea about how ‘play’ can be used when dealing with special needs children. Just a simple game will teach them some of the skills. Activities such as catching the ankle can improve their brain development, riding the horse can let them play the role of leader and follower and how to teach them to learn words by using games. These no doubt will make the learning process become more interesting and help them to learn easily. I was in great agitation when those kids perform on the stage with full of confident. They are expressing themselves through their interests. Awesome! It’s like a celebration of their uniqueness! I think their parents were proud of them too. Just like a snowflake or a fingerprint, every child especially a child with special needs, is unique in their own special way.

-cool to be you-

After such a long period of preparation, our “Cool to be You” kids camp has been successfully held on 11/4/12 at PenangPac. I’m so grateful to have numbers of staffs to help us throughout the event; they diminish our burdens. I’m so touched by their willingness to offer us assistance and guidance. Without their helps, it is kind of impossible for four of us to make this event succeed. Previously, I used to involve in organizing camps and community services. What makes this event so special to me not just because of the earthquake but it improved my administrative communication with interns and parents and publicity. Another thing is language, those camps or community services I conducted mostly are in Mandarin and Malay. This is the very first time I have to lead an activity in English. No doubt that it became a burden for me. Days before the camp I was suffering from excessive nervousness due to my high expectation of myself. I feel great to work together with other interns as all of us can contribute our ideas and capability in different areas. I think we did a great job in distribute our duties.  Thanks for your commitment. Giving will reap the greatest harvest. Finally, it’s over.

She's smiling

GH session: I am very happy to see that a young patient, Sifa started to talk to me after I play with her for few times. Last week she begun to respond to me by nod and shake her head to tell me what she wants and does not want. This week, she can verbally tell me what she wants to play and take the initiative to interact with me while playing her puzzle. Even it just a small breakthrough, but it gave me a sense of accomplishment. It is glad to see that she is getting healthier and can walk around the room. =）

therapeutic storytelling

As we doing our play therapy in general hospital, another activity we can do to interact with the kids there is story telling. We can convey our message by using metaphor and imagery in the story to change the way the kids see their lives and the world, at the same time offering healing and growth to them. The story can be an encouragement and comfort for the kids. So today, Alex teaches us about narrative skills in story telling such as how to maintain eye contact with all the participant, get their attention, physically and mentally prepare them to listen story and etc.. The most important thing is the story teller has to enjoy telling a story. In order to make the story more interesting, the story teller has to add adjective and description in story to the children. This is to help the children more involve in the story and  visualize the story. We are actually given the chance to tell a story in front of the ‘kids’. The story i choose to tell is about the prodigal son. What Alex said is true that kids might feel hard to connect themselves with the story. Thus in order to relate the story to their age, I change the ‘father’ to ‘Daddy Rabbit’ in the story. When we playing different roles in the story, we need to pay attention to our voice and tone. It is to differentiate which character we are playing.  

      Another thing we can do is puppet playing. We can either use the puppet to tell the story or use the puppet to interact with the kids. Again, we have role play in puppet playing. Each of us have the change to play/talk to the puppet and showing an emotion by using puppet. I never though it can be so challenging. Puppet is not just we play with it by using part of our hand but the whole self have to be commited into the role. In the past, my understanding about narrative skills is how we create and tell a story. But from the training today, I get to know more about the therapeutic technique about storytelling and how we choose a story. One particular thing that I need to remind myself is my speed. When I talk, I used to talk fast. I have to slow down my speed in my speech else the children or my client might not manage to get what I trying to tell and if I talk too fast, they seems to have hard time following me. It’s time to me to prepare one story in mind so that I can use this technique to approach the kids there. Alex suggested the story can be related to how to dealing with pain as the kids were suffering from physical pain. By doing so, the story can be valuable source of healing for kids.  

the doll has something to say (this is not a ghost story)

I love what has been learnt today as it’s something new and useful for me that I can apply it for my next hospital session. When there’s patient that only focus on his or her playing without interacting with me, normally what I will do is sit next to him or her and observe how he or she is playing. What I thinking is, I will not forcing the client to interact with me if he or she is uncomfortable to play with me. I will let him or her play alone. But today what Alex has taught is like a ‘that is so!’ in my head.  When the client is unwilling interact with us, what we can do is modeling; we follow what he or she is doing. We get the same object with the client and imitate the way he or she is playing.  By doing so, we begin to build up the connection. We can even send our message to the client through the object. This also can get the client’s attention in what we are doing rather than being passive. What we can do is we talk to the object what we actually want the patient to know.      Alex even requires us to get attach with a doll. It’s kind of weird at the beginning as there are so many eyes are looking at me. But as I take some times to really feel the doll, to sense what kind of feelings that I have when I holding the doll, somehow I manage to involve myself into the role. The open armed doll makes me feel accepted and welcomed. As I let her lay down on my shoulder, I feel both of us are closely related. This also reminds me I used to talk to my doll in the past. I guess there’s why I manage to connect with the doll easily. Another issue that I need to overcome is doing it without care about how people might respond to my behavior. It’s true that the first thing come into my mind when seeing a lady talking alone to the doll is ‘I think she is mentally deranged. But if I really wish to get connected with the children patients, this is something that I need to overcome.

play session

As I observe the way sue plays, she reminds me about compliance personality. I was surprised a compliance personality can be so obvious in a six years old kid. She is systematic and organizes in her playing. She wants very thing to be accurate just like the moment she drawing the straight line.  Min See tells us that this can be part of her personality but also may because of the expression of her psychological needs. When Sue cannot control the real life situation (such as her father remarry issue), she will try to control those things that she can control. Throughout the session Sue did not show any sign of self-harm behavior, she is very quiet and polite instead.  She is very passive and didn’t talk much with us, only talk to us when she needs something. Most of time she talking with herself; even I tried to draw near I still couldn’t heard clearly what she is saying. When she wants to play at another corner of the room, she didn't directly tells us she wants go move over there. She will look at the corner and waiting for us to ask her. Min See told us that this is because she need affirmation/assurance to do something. I personally feel comfortable to play with Sue even though she did not talk much with me. Working with children in the play session requires more attention and observation, because we not just playing with them but we have to be aware of what the children trying to tell us from the toy they choose, the way they play and so on. 

ALS homework

What I see in the picture is a black lady with long eye lashes, wearing white colour dress with white hanging earring. She has black long hair tied by white flower hair decoration. Closed eye.

Her hands is open up, butterfly stay on both hands. there 14 colourful butterflies in the picture. The background colour of this picture is green and yellow.