Today was our 1st day of peds. FW! I've been waiting for this since day 1. I was super excited about it, not nervous at all which was a nice change. My only concern was what if I got a child that didn't want to do anything? I wasn't all that concerned about it b/c most kids can pick at least one thing they like to do. Luckily I got 2 very sweet and easily amused children, also a nice change from geriatrics. When I got my first kid, D she ran out of her room, gave me a hug and held my hand all the way to pick up the other kids and down to the cafeteria. She was excited about what we were going to do and was excited that I would come back next week. The connection was effortless. My boy didn't give me a hug but I could still tell that he had fun. He asked me when it was time to go if I had fun, I forgot that he was the teacher and I was his assistant.
A few weeks ago my child came in for peds. assessment day. Our instructor gave her some of the crayons from Handwriting Without Tears. They are these teeny tiny crayons. When I looked at them I was like there is no way these help handwriting. I tried them out with her but she didn't like them b/c she couldn't use her fisted grasp. D was coloring her picture, she didn't have a bad pinch but it wasn't great either. I would say it was close to adaptive tripod. Our instructor came over broke her crayon in half and gave it back to her, now she suddenly had the perfect tripod pinch, it was pretty impressive. That was the most interesting thing I learned today, definitely something I need to remember.
Something that happened today that reinforced something that I learned was that the grasp pattern for holding a pencil really does matter, even for coloring. Like I said above I didn't think D's grasp was awful but even her coloring improved once she moved into tripod grasp. Something that I've learned from past experience is that there is a huge difference between kindergarteners and 1st graders. This was evident by how much faster the 1st graders completed their group activity and how their type of play was more creative and imaginative than the kindergartners. I think the big difference explains why some kids are held back in kindergarten. I'm glad we got kids from different grades, its nice to be able to compare.
What I am most looking forward to is seeing my children grow and improve. The turnover rate in geriatrics FW was really high, which is super great but, I didn't really get to see anyone improve. I know they did b/c they got discharged but it would have been nice to see the week by week improvement. I guess that's what I can look forward to for FW 2 since I will be there all day, every day for 8 weeks.
All in all, I was right & I'm looking forward to seeing my kids next week!
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