Ok, 'bout time to get this show on the road!
Umm … this is us before nap.
And, this is us after nap.
We had woken up between 4-5 am and then gone back to bed and slept two more hours. Woo Hooo! V was up in between there, but has signed off now … So, I have to remind ourselves to do school, because if he were here that’s what he would be doing. So, we’re going to write just a short note here. We’d eaten cereal earlier and took our medicine just now. There wasn’t too long since we’ve last written … so just a little more to tell.
Yesterday was our meeting day … so, we did all that. The administration meeting was for an hour and 45 minutes, and then we did the Thinking Group, because it wasn’t my turn to sit in on the Staff meeting. Yesterday … I was thinking toward cultural, so the idea came to mind of the group making Totem Poles. I showed them what that was about and then they each drew their faces and we had them by table hold their part of the totem pole above or below the next persons so that the sheets lined up in a column … well for at least most of them, and then we took a picture. After that each group sat down and we recorded why their Totem pole was important. They did great with the exercise. This is the first time I have taken their pictures in the Thinking Group or recorded their voices. I had to figure out the tape recorder on the PDA right before the group started. I knew the machine could record … just hadn’t figured it out yet. Afterward the group stayed very quiet and we played back their voices speaking … they liked that a lot. The idea now is to be able to put both through the computer at the same time and then somehow get it to a DVD so that we can show it back to them. The client I consider the top on computers, asked “You can do it?!” And, I said, I think so … we’re going to try … Well, this person always is pretty happy, but I think that made him a smidge happier. I will remember him saying, “Good!” as our encouragement to figure it out. They know that I’ll have to work on it, but it make us feel real good too if we could. One more thing on that score … after we were done one of the clients came up with the idea that it was our turn. We were a little taken back because we had thought of the project being for them. But, then the other clients were in agreement and the first had said to the others, “Everybody together now!” And, so they chanted in unison for me to do it. That tickled me to pieces. So, I gave my camera to one of them and I said, but I need some people in my picture too! So, a bunch of them gathered around and the picture was taken, and then I did my voice recording too. Shoot, this group … they really, really grow on a person. They just make me sooooo happy!
*Sigh* In other news, well the Administration meeting went pretty good. I had organized my thoughts for an hour before hand and had taken notes after reading my notes from the meetings the month before. Good thinking. I felt more ready to contribute. I also noted that Sr. had assigned me a task to come up for the staff areas where they might want to be taught. Theoretically, I thought if they want to be taught it was them who could tell me, but like most often … there is a little more helping them to think through things. That was kind of fun … we listed the areas they were each being taught by the me from the state material, then I used as an outline the transcript that the intern had brought in for something else and I just listed some basic ideas and gave them a little more depth of two or three topics within each area. I wasn’t going to be in the staff meeting, but I had made copies for the admin team and that went over pretty good. Each discussed things and it gave me an opportunity when Sister brought up the photography and history, some of the ideas I had had … I told them about the Thinking group the week before where we had gone over the King of England and France fighting over land, and then asking them what they would fight for and what they would give up to get it. I think that went over pretty good. I had also forgotten to tell her that we’d ordered the CD’s for the clients for our birthday gift. She didn’t say as much about that, but I think it was an ok idea. The other Q. was a little put out, so she raised a stink about where we were going to play these CDs and I said you don’t need an Internet just a computer, but then as it turned out she stated that a couple of the machines weren’t working, but that only made Sr. mad because noone had again told her. Then the other Q made statements that it was the computers fault, but not the clients. While I recognize the computers are getting older, I also know they aren’t as well supervised as they should be and there’s a lot of button pushing with things they don’t know about. Sister really got on her case for not following protocol and for something else, I don’t remember. One way or another … I felt I’d made out ok on this meeting. It helped that I had something to add. That’s always better than coming in with complaints I still didn’t like how the other Q tried to make things I was saying negative. But, I know well enough by now that’s just the way she is and I don’t have to let it affect me. See, we must be improving with something!
I stayed at work for about an hour after leaving time. We had had another meeting with the DSP from the lowest group and the intern to go over goals for another client having an annual next week. There was only a half an hour and we came to an agreement on the three areas and fleshed out one of the goals, but I needed to continue that afterward. I only got one more goal done, but I think we made pretty good progress. So far, we’ve started to finished work on three of the four July people. Every day we’ve been in meetings and the intern has been busy with observations and preference interviews with the clients. I think she is getting very good opportunities to know them. I am very proud of her work, and noticed yesterday she was starting to get the excitement of working with them. She had also done goals with them and had shown me a computer story one had made where the client had written about her feelings toward me as her Q. I can’t say it enough … this group is just phenomenal and it excites me soooo much that the intern is picking this up … the cool part of the clients. Her work with the observations is superb! It allowed me to really look at the behaviors and she is able to see the intricate detail like us. Yesterday, she did the observation of one of the most introverted of our clients. She too found herself very interested in all the things that are going on with this client, even though she says so little. Really, really cool stuff.
What had blown me away toward the very last part of the day was that I was trying to figure out the last client’s goals … one of my lower ended clients and I was pretty happy with the first two goals. One of them we were working with sharing, so we devised a timed game where she will be asked to share a cush ball as a means of teaching her the cue word of “sharing.” The other goal is a directional goal where we are going to work with her becoming more responsive. She has trouble transferring from one task to another, or leaving the present task to go to another event. Basically, the prompts are toward “go” by saying the words, “Let’s go to …” and then stop, and then wait. It’ll be a “fun” goal sort of based on the game “Simple Simon” where the person is asked to go forward, except there will be a home base by the door and she will have particular destinations either in the room or courtyard to make it too. The last goal we hadn’t gotten too far along, but it will have something to do with
The last goal will have something to do with her becoming more tolerable or flexible, accepting-patience, and handling disappointment for not achieving immediate gratification. This client is at an approximate age level of two years old, so things are pretty much “all toys in the room belong to her” and she becomes upset when others are using what becomes the toy she wants. It became important for me to think through the processes so I did it similar to how we might do a course assignment where we charted our progression of thoughts. First thought was to make things more pleasant to her because she is more apt to follow along in that mood. Most often she is very into her own thoughts, so one objective will be to help her in being more aware and we need to help her be more in synch with the DSP. So, part of the goal will be building more of a relationship. Then it occurred to me that what we were talking about got into the self-regulation work we’d been doing. I thought about the statement toward catching her attention by the manner of instruction and being emotionally supportive. It meant to me that if she was self-isolating in a preoccupied manner that she was trying to take care of her own needs with little trust of the staff intervening. We know this client does a lot of the self-speech that we were working with in the behavior for toddlers. I think most often when people talk to this client, they are giving her too much information and it has the affect of going over her head. I think the staff has to show much more interest in modeling the changes from one task to another. They need to do more guiding of her attention. It reminded me we’d come across something earlier in the day on self-regulation being a factor of self-determination. We had been listening to our video in the background and the whole plausibility of this client’s situation and what we were getting to in the paper started to merge very quickly in flashes of though. But, it had overwhelmed us at the time. We left ourselves some markers so we could go back to it later, but by that time the intern had come in and her projects needed some attention.
She had just finished the work from the introverted client. She was surprised how many notes she had taken. They totaled up to four pages double-spaced. I just can’t say enough about her observation ability. She had started having thoughts on the significance of some of the behaviors. So, we thought cool, cool! There wasn’t enough time though to go into things more detailed. But, that’s the beauty of the observation is that you freeze a moment of time and then are able to go back over and analyze/synthesize. She’s just so gosh darn smart! We had an excellent first week together even though it was only three days long. Very, very proud of her.
So that’s pretty much of the work situation. We were tired when we got home and our friend had a game. He’s coming over though late tonight … so, we’ll get a chance to get some things done. After we ate dinner, we thought we better give our Grandma a call. We missed not being able to hear from her. We talked for about 40 minutes. We fell into conversations about some of the old things of her earlier life. She had brought up again her excitement of having worked with the younger great grandchildren on projects where they asked about her earlier experiences. She’s had some really good experiences with it. I think that at least three of the great grandchildren have come to her over the last couple of years and asked into her life. She had thought with us back to the days where she was working on her families farm. We know she only had an 8th grade education and was expected to be working out in the field. I had recalled from being 10 years old and getting a chance to meet members of her family in North Dakota and seeing her father’s farm now passed down to other family and in seeing the one room school house her grandfather had built for the town. He later came to own a general sundry store.
I could remember the outbuildings at the farm and both of us remembered my sister getting stuck in the mud of the river. I remembered the part of collecting frogs. The building that stood out in my mind the most was seeing a cook shack. It had the appearance of being a train car. It was on wheels and had what was necessary to cook for the farmers while out in the field. She said she had worked many years doing the cooking with her aunts for the men. I remember there was a huge long bench that came out and a long table. She said that they would stay out overnight and sleep on the table and that sometimes they didn’t get much sleep, because the table obviously wasn’t real comfortable. She said there wasn’t too much time to be worrying about entertainment, because it was pretty late by the time all the dishes were washed up and you would have to be up very early to get breakfast ready. They served all three meals.
I thought that was just so gosh darn cool. Wow! She also told me something about my Grandfather I didn’t know. It turns out that his father beside the feat of having 14 children, with my Grandfather being the oldest; well he turns out to have been a blacksmith! I didn’t know … she said he worked on shoeing horses, but as well work for the church and organs or work with stoves and such … I think there were pipes to be bent and held together. I so much love my Grandmother’s stories. She’s such a good storyteller. The other area we discussed was ball games. Somehow we got into that area, but I’m not too sure how. I told her that I’d read a story on AOL news that evening about someone from her city of Coon Rapids, MN. He was someone that needed to lose about 50 pounds, and he figured his best bet was to mow other peoples lawns. I think that made her happy. Oh, that was it! It reminded me that my home city was going to be hosting the new MN Vikings. I came from Blaine, MN. She went into detail of how that was all still in question and she talked about the multi-million dollar owner of the Vikings who wanted to build up the city with retail and how some of the city folk wanted it to be left alone the way it already is. It’s a city that has been building now for the last 50 years. It’s no older than that … had been farm territory 17 miles north of Minneapolis/St. Paul. Well, of course, we had come that far, so we went into further conversation about Culpepper, Randy Moss, and the boat incident! Turns out the new owner doesn’t like that kind of selfishness. Hehehe … My Grandma stays in TOUCH! I’m going to be like that too when I grow up!
Last area was that we made it to most of the meeting with the multiples. We didn’t do so good with this one either. We were pretty quiet and reserved. It’s different for us to hear all the younger parts out of others playing. We’ve got younger parts definitely, but they don’t do so much talking to strangers. Every once in a great while V. will interact, much more frequently with our friend and Dr. M. AND, when triggered unexpectedly. There’s something different too in that it seems other multiples type differently when a younger part is out. We’ve always thought it important that another part be present that could be on guard. They do the typing for the few younger parts that might want to say something. Maybe its more typical to be a multiple with poor typing/spelling younger parts. I wouldn’t know too much about this. I don’t have a huge amount of experience with other multiples. Felt a little out of place … too much we don’t know yet and I think there are a few that don’t mind our newness, but I have the feeling that its more like a toleration, because the few statements we make aren’t always responded to. There also are not a whole lot of questions about who you are and what’s important to us. Pretty much you are left in the room on your own, it’s a little like being ignored, which gives us those feelings of being invisible. It is not a real welcoming feeling. As if we’re intruding on their common experience together. But, we figure we’re into it for the long haul. Not sure though why this is important to us.
It’s a little easier being in the other group … the one we found the other night in the aol chat room for people who have been abused. They are much more apt to include you in the discussion. When new people come in they “check them out” in a sense to make sure they are ok. So, most often when a new person comes in with concerns of having or being abused, the group is much more likely to focus attention on them. I have the impression though that there is a pretty set manner of speaking to the new people. If the new person has been abused and is still in the relationship, there are strong guidelines set for that person to use his resources to stop the abuse. In general, that is pretty sound advise, but there are problems with it too. Just as far as there are a lot of little steps that have to be played out from one thing to another. BUT, because the group holds so firmly toward their beliefs it kind of jumps the survivor to immediate needs. I’m not sure how many are lost in the shuffle, because they feel inadequate to the task at hand. The group is still advocating therapeutic relationships which was something we used to do back in the day. And, they are very good at relaying that they are there for the people entering the room. Almost like a triage center. I think that ideas are held to be pretty much the same from one group member to the others. I presented a different line of thinking concerning power last night. I believed in what we were saying, but there was a little part where I felt the devil’s advocate, in that, I continued our conversation along our line of thinking even though I knew the three main people presenting an argument against my line of thinking were presenting a united front. Basically, I believe in self-control, but thoughts on power is its best to give away. Their idea was power allowed self-control, I think. I utilize much more the concept of building strength. I think of power as something that can be very abusive. My Grandfather for existence had power and used it against me. Where I could have “power” over the clients, but choose to give it back to them as often as possible. They want to sometimes rely on staff, but they will never grow to be independent people if they don’t have reciprocal lines of self-control. I told the group that power is something we tried to give away. And, I think that is a hard concept. Our closest tie to it is that culturally, I think most people “fill-up” like in America we want more and more, where in some Eastern religions the idea is less is better. I think it was the same for the hippies. They tried to get away from all the trappings of society. Letting go and letting be. An Eastern thought would be to simplify to the degree one could relate with nature and a sense of the Universe. Kind of an old concept of meditation being “one.”
Anyway, none of it was good or bad, right and wrong. Maybe more a testing of cultural acceptance. Basically, would I be ok if I held different ideas, or would they try to inundate me with concepts I couldn’t abide with. Challenge to one’s thoughts are good, needing to be like others just to belong is not so good. I think it went pretty well, after a while the discussion faded away, but I still had the sense that I was being accepted for who I was and that it was ok to challenge the thoughts grounded by the group. I think we will learn much more this semester about social psychology and that all this might work together. I’m reminded here about a book glanced at in our younger college days by Peter Berger called, “The social construction of reality.” I’ve thought all along it was one of my top 5 books ever. One way or another if families, groups, and community are to get along, they have to be more open than self-serving. The group has to preserve, but not at the expense of those others who represent change.
Oh dear … this is enough of this … We’re getting pretty much to the part where we need to get back into school. We KNOW we’ve got paper places to go … and we find ourselves excited to be doing the video again. Throughout the week we went back to listen to ourselves. It is amazing how incredible difficult it seems at time to understand what is in front of us to comprehend. And, then at others, most likely with a switching of the parts, it becomes very common sensible. I don’t think it is really easy to hold long series of thoughts together at this point though by anyone. It’s much too big and we’re much too inexperienced at this point. I’ve been enjoying though the process of thinking through things. I get frustrated and having such a slow mind, but I figure that if we just keep at it, we can look forward to the day we are a better set of thinkerers. Least that would be a gosh darn good goal!
Ok, we’re going to post so we can get started. We’ll be writing over here ------->
Shoot only half pack smokes left though ... Please watch out for that?? AND, maybe get the last of those books out ... AND we appreciate someone doing the bills this morning, but could sommmmmmmmmmeone get those last few books out in the mail? Just a thought! Ok, ok ... I know school first, BUT don't forget please!
posted by Ann Marie @ 7/08/2006 09:42:00 AM
Comments: 2
