Saturday, August 11, 2012

This place is starting to feel like home suite home!


Hey everyone! Happy August!

As I wrap up my first month here in OH I can’t believe how fast time is going!  Really it was only the first week that I was feeling homesick, only because I didn’t know ANYONE out here.  I’m starting to meet people, find really fun things to do, and actually learning to just CHILL OUT.  Any therapist will tell you self-care is beyond important..
I am pretty bummed I didn’t get a good beach trip this year though, but there are a couple little beaches around the lake I have to find time to go visit before it gets cold.  I am NOT looking forward to that quite yet, I am enjoying my walks to my car (20 minutes..crazy I know), walks to church, jogging after a long day, I just don’t want to be freezing yet!  I hear Ohio winters are a little rough, so care packages of hot chocolate and fuzzy sweaters won’t be turned away. ;)
This week was just great; I was out of the hospital and went to camp!  The camp was for children ages 6-13 on the Autism spectrum.  The theme of the camp was space explorers and each day we talked about different skills these kids need to be successful as they begin school again. Listening skills, behavior skills, anger and stress management, health and hygiene, and social skills were all addressed and on the last day, the children talked about God.
I was so proud of my co-intern and I, we had great ideas and I think we really made an impact on these kid’s week!  We used our music purposefully and to achieve the goal of the day.  For instance, the first day I had prepared a song for the older children and the one for the younger kids.  In these songs, I had a key word for them to listen for, and every time they heard the word they had to hold up the picture I gave them.  I rewrote the words to Nicki Minaj’s “Starships” and then used a song called “I don’t Want to Live on the Moon” adding lyrics about listening to the pilot, following directions, etc.  This allowed them to not only hear what skills we wanted them to know, but to have to execute them by holding up the pictures. 
All of the kids were wonderful, it is challenging at times to work with this population even if you are a professional.  Dealing with outbursts, concrete thinking, sensory sensitivities, we really had our work cut out for us, but it could not have gone better! 
Well, actually, one thing could have gone better; I had a minor moment of poor judgment.  I’m only going to tell you about this because, EVERYONE makes mistakes, so I might as well own up to mine.
The day of health and hygiene I wanted to talk about exercise with the older group.  Dancing is a form of exercise, so I taught them the wobble.  This was not the bad part, the kids loved it, they comprehended why we were doing it, and it was a very smooth ten or fifteen minutes.  But…me having a 22 year old brain, I put the actual song on the CD for the kids to take home.  I THOUGHT I edited it well enough, cutting out the bad words and an entire verse talking about, well, you get it.  Anyway, the song should not have been included on the CD at all, not appropriate.  Fortunately, the director of the camp and all the instructors gave us enough time to fix all the CDs so none of the kids got the dirty version of the CD. Then, everyone had a good laugh about it. So although it was embarrassing and made me feel pretty discouraged about being a professional, everything is a learning opportunity. 

 By the way, watching a group of 9-year-old boys shake their hips and do the wobble is just plain hilarity, and they knew it, those little hams.
 I am excited go back to my regular crazy weeks at the hospital on Monday but absolutely LOVED my week at camp, it's really starting to make me think I want to end up working with kids.
Hi to everyone back in VA I miss you, I am planning a trip home soon!

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