Anything is possible...even pediatrics

Jen? Working in pediatrics?

I stepped into Pediatrics this semester with mixed feelings. Many OTs that I have run into in their respective fields have told me stories that they went into school thinking that they always wanted to work in Peds and then they fell in love with Geriatrics or the exact opposite…they NEVER wanted to work with kids and that is exactly where they ended up. All of them said…just don't be close-minded when you're in school...you never know what opportunity will come to you and what you will enjoy doing until you learn and experience the profession. I took those words to heart and decided to keep my mind open to any possibility. Well, the more I learn about Peds, the more I can see myself working in geriatrics haha. But the semester isn't over and I'll keep on giving it a fair shot.

Last week we started FW at a site for transitional homeless families at their Youth Enrichment Night. My initial concerns were that the children would be wild and untamable! I was in charge of the 2-4 year olds and I envisioned them running all over the room and me going crazy not being able to handle the chaos. We planned as much as we could plan, but still didn’t have a good idea what kids would show up. It ended up working wonderfully! I didn’t have any 2-4 year olds show up, so I teamed up with the 8 and older group to do finger knitting. It was such a good experience and the children were so well behaved. They were so excited to learn a new trade and were really good at it also (which is always helpful). My classmate was so prepared and brought samples, written directions and demonstrated the initial steps for the project. Preparation for this activity was key!

Another thing I noticed was how important figuring out the child's learning styles where ...especially as they learned something difficult and something they have never been exposed to. The particular child I worked with was struggling with the sequencing and direction. I made up a saying for when he got to the tricky part - I kept repeating the same "around the back...up and over the finger". He kept saying it out loud and his own VC's helped him finish the project! It was really awesome to see my VC's turn into his main strategy for making the project work for him.

I’m really looking forward to the next 2 weeks. We are doing some fine motor/handwriting screens and assessments that will highlight some red flags for the children to work on. We are hoping to screen each child and leave some type of assessment on each of them before we leave. The organizer requested this before we began working with the children and it would really help her out with planning curriculum for Youth Enrichment Nights.

I felt good about our activities and our initial rapport with the children. I hope we can a least screen and/or assess each child for areas where they might need help with fine motor and hand writing before we leave. Even though we are only there for 3 weeks, I hope we can leave a little bit of an impact.