Don't get me wrong... I still do feel that way... but when I wrote that it was on Friday evening when I was feeling light-hearted about the upcoming weekend stretching in front of me. How fast Monday comes! And today was not a good Monday.
The day started off with me getting up early so I could go to see my supervisor and get this week's list of children participating in the program. Some kids sign up for the whole summer, and others sign up by the week, so every week we may or may not have new kids. It would be awesome if we could get the week-by-week list for the whole summer ahead of time, but some families wait until Sunday night to sign their kids up for the week that starts on Monday morning, apparently. So each Monday someone has to drive down and get the list. Why doesn't the supervisor just email me the list each week? I HAVE NO IDEA, REALLY!
I got all the way there, only to have the supervisor tell me, she had sent the list to our building via one of our staff members... but she didn't remember who she gave it to. So I had to go back to our building, where of course the list was no where to be found. Who did she send it with? We never found out. I asked all of the staff members but nobody had even seen our supervisor on Friday, let alone gotten a list from her. We had to call her and ask her to email the list, which she took her time about doing, and by the time we got the list there was only a few minutes before the kids would arrive. Each kid in our program gets a 1:1 mentor, and the big problem was, we like to have the mentors already matched with the kids before they arrive on Monday morning, so they can go out and meet the parents and the child and start the week out right. But without knowing who was coming, it was impossible to get things ready ahead of time. We were scrambling... only to realize, just as the kids were arriving, that we were short-staffed. My co-leader and I each had to be in charge of a kid for the morning. And usually, I'd enjoy spending some 1:1 time with one of our children... except I usually use the first hour or so in the morning to prepare all of the activities for the day and make name labels for the new kids. By 2 hours into the day, I had gotten nothing done, and it was time for our morning circle. Of course I hadn't gotten Greeting Meeting prepared at all because I'd had to be 1:1 with a child, so everything was in disarray. But we carried on. I skipped half of our Meeting activities because half of the kids were screaming by the end of the first ten minutes.
Immediately after Greeting Meeting, I had to run a music group. Usually another one of my co-leaders does it, but she was out. It isn't very hard... we have a CD with a bunch of movement songs, and it just involves playing the CD and doing the activities and dances with the kids. It is actually a lot of fun. Except... our large CD player was broken and wouldn't play. We have a smaller CD player but the speakers are really quiet, so the kids could barely hear the music, so most of them were just sitting in their seats looking oddly at me as I tried to encourage them to do the music activities. Then the CD started skipping badly. Luckily children with special needs are really good at dealing with sudden changes and disruptions in their daily routine, so they were not bothered at all when I tried to improvise...
Do you believe me? (I hope not, because I'm lying.)
I eventually solved the problem by getting our laptop, hooking up it's portable speakers, and playing the CD on it. It still skipped a little, but we managed to get through Music at least.
The next hour went okay, as I was working with my co-leader on planning our upcoming field trip. But then three of our staff members came in, towing a 10-year-old along with them. We have a few staff members... pretty much the same ones I mentioned in this post... that are frequently getting into power struggles with kids. We really encourage natural consequences, Love and Logic, and that sort of thing... but these staff members still, no matter what, end up getting in situations where they feel like the goal is to force the child to obey, or else the child "wins."
So now we have this 10-year-old, Tobias, who is energetic but has never really showed serious behavior problems during the rec program. Yet here he is being hauled into the Calm Down Room, where he pretty much implodes. He's spitting and hitting and screaming, and these two staff members are in his face saying, "That's not nice. If you do that again you're going to lose (insert random activity here.)"
We suggested, and then insisted, that the two staff members take a break from Tobias and let us take over. Usually when a kid is losing control, our tactic is to tell him we need him to have a safe body, and then calmly wait him out. We don't have an actual time-out room with a door, so we have to physically stay in the room with him to keep him from running off. This means we end up taking a lot of punches and other abuse. And you have to try really hard not to show any reaction, because that can make things escalate fast. You have to completely disengage, keep your face blank, and just try to step out of the way or block his punches. Of course some punches get through. And Tobias, apparently, likes to spit. So despite my best efforts, I ended up getting some loogies right in my face... and just calmly wiping them away.
Usually when the child starts to calm down... because when they're imploding like that you almost just have to keep them safe and ride it out until they're able to hear you and process things... we will start doing things like helping them name their emotion and identify the level, try to talk them through some calming down steps, get them to talk about what happened to trigger it, problem solve to remedy the situation in some way, and eventually get them back into the flow of their day. But this time, that simmering-down process just wasn't coming. Tobias kept coming with the punches and the screams and the kicks and the spit wads and the projectiles (which, luckily at least, were just pillows) and seemed to be trying to get a reaction from us, willing us to fight back. This went on all the way up until it was time for the parents to pick the children up. Meanwhile, other staff members had cheerfully taken over the activities that I was supposed to be running at that time.
Finally the day was over, Tobias's mom came, the other children's parents came, and things were calm. I felt like crying. Not really about Tobias, specifically, because all that is par for the course, but just about how the rest of the day had gone. The thing with the participant list and the thing with music and being understaffed and a bunch of other random, small things that had occurred throughout the day.
I must have looked spent, because one staff member came up to me and said, "You did a great job today, Angel," and another staff member randomly came up and hugged me and said, "Thanks for everything." Because, aside from a few people who really bug me, I really do work with the most amazing people. They are kind and patient and flexible. And as I thought about this, I realized...
"I really love the summer rec program! I wish it could go all year!"
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