A Toddler Jonah Day.

Today is one of those days that just started out right but have a very exasperating middle & a fantastic ending.

It started out a warm & sunny day. Remind me that I should never complain about the sunny weather especially when I am running out of warm clothing (just waiting for my supply to arrive, hopefully in the next two weeks). Winter clothing costs an arm & leg, so I think I shall just wait for my parents to send it from KL. Postage isn't too bad when the Australian currency exchange is about RM3: AUD1.

Anyways, today I worked with the toddlers..... Oh my gosh.. the toddlers were acting up! There were 5 boys who were pretty disruptive, and the rest of the group who were watching decided to join them. So the entire group was pretty much acting up.

I kept on reflecting about the reasons why I could have such difficulty in handling them, & partly the reason I realised that is because I wasn't using the right way to interact with them.

Toddlers have different needs from pre-schoolers. This age group requires more kindness, patience & a different way of talking than from the older age group. Of course, sometimes what we read in books at university can only be translated to knowledge with a real life scenario on a continual basis. Since I do not primarily handle this age group, it was a real tremendous learning curve for me.

These are some of the things I remember & observed about them:

• Toddlers are at the developmental stage that they don't take well to strangers & new faces.
• Toddlers are still mostly blabbing and speaking in two or three word sentences, sometimes its harder for a casual to understand what they are trying to say.
• Toddlers respond better to a kind word rather than a direct instruction (they may not understand what the adult wants and thus ignores them!).
• Toddlers listen better if the adult makes it like a game for them to follow instructions.
• Toddlers still need a firm hand at the end of the day.
  

I guess that just means that I have to adapt the way I talk to them than what I was originally planning to do. Oh well!

ECP1002: Day 2 in Toddler Room

It was raining this morning. I was feeling absolutely grumpy as I wanted to catch the bus at 6.50 am, but it didn’t arrive till 7.30 am, and I was caught at the bus stand in the midst of the rain. By the time I arrived at the centre, it was already 8.30 am.

I was annoyed not so much that I arrived at 8.30, but because I had a tutorial for one of the other courses that I had to attend on Thursdays at 5pm, and I thought I was going to have to skip it today.

I was mulling over it the entire morning, thinking of what to say to the mentor, if she could allow me to get off early so that I could catch the bus and get to the university in time. My attendance for this tutorial was also taken down, so it was important that I didn’t miss any of the tutorials.

Finally, one of the other university students told me that I could negotiate the hours with the mentor, and I could replace the hours should I had not done them. Which is what I finally did.

I told the mentor that I did not want her to think that I was slacking off, or that I did not want to help out in the classroom, if that was what she thought. The mentor was supportive enough that she allowed me to get off at the same time I did last week, and she discouraged me from skipping my tutorial. She was wondering why I had a tutorial on a Thursday, when the other students didn’t, and I told her that they were all Year 1 students, whereas I was not, and was taking a combination of differe nt intake courses as a result.

Anyway, the other thing was that, I felt that the spirits of the individuals in the classroom (children, classroom assistant) was rather low this morning. I also saw the classroom assistant crying (which I could immediately discern it to be a personal issue), and I tried to cheer up, so that I would not be feeling as low as she was. Having one staff feeling low is bad enough, without the need for two other adults to be feeling just as low as well.

I was praying hard this morning after coming into the classroom, as I really did not want my emotions and worries to affect my performance at the workplace, and that the entire atmosphere would lighten up. Which, fortunately it somehow did.

I know it’s not appropriate for a staff to bring personal issues to the workplace, but I would state that it is difficult for a human to always be able to divorce their emotional state from their work place state. Somehow, being at the workplace with all the children around helps me not to ponder so much on the issues I have at home, because I have to focus on the children instead and the r esponsibility I have towards them.

I really prepared very much for the first day of professional experience, but this week, I was not as emotionally prepared, although I had my paperwork typed out and printed to show to our university liaison, Megan , who had come in to examine all the university student’s work.

I know that, as I have been having issues trying to focus my studies in the past couple of wee ks, and my emotional state has not been at it most positive. Apart from the depression I was going through, I now have other emotional issues that I have to handle, and I am really trying my very best to overcome it.

The girl who cried last week when her nappy was changed (she only comes on Thursdays), did not cry this week. I remembered most of the names of the children, but there were quite a number of them whose names I did not remember.

The mentor was very supportive today, as she gave me some verbal guidance as I read to the children, and sang the transition song to them before their lunch time.