Craziest Day I've Had in a While

The preschool teacher that I work with on Wednesdays has an assistant/aide in the class. This aide is rather useless in my opinion and does little more than sit, check folders, and run a pointless center during *center time!* This aide was out today, so the teacher asked me if I could be in the classroom the whole time (sometimes I'm in and out doing various tasks) to help out since the sub-aide wouldn't be there for a while. I agreed.

The morning went well. I enjoy just getting down and playing with the kids in a language rich kind of way. Being invited to help out made me feel like less of an outsider. I played with the kids who needed my services and while I wasn't sitting down doing 1:1 *therapy* I got to guide the kids into some really nice play schemes. During my 90 minutes between preschool classes I wrote some HS interim reports, wrote some e-mails, talked with a HS teacher (DRAMA in the HS), and wrote lengthy notes to parents in our speech notebooks. It was a rather productive 90 minutes. Then I realized I hadn't eaten lunch yet and was due back to help in the classroom. Now, a sub did show up later during the morning session, but we all know how children do with subs. It doesn't matter the age of the children, they all know what's up and that it's time to be crazy. So, I took a swig of water and went down to the classroom.

The afternoon class is a bit more crazy than the morning class, but still a good group. All was well until the teacher was choosing some students to write the letter of the week on the dry erase board. She only chooses some students (why, I do not know). One particular little boy was skipped for today. That was the end of it. He began crying and when crying didn't work, he was downright mad! Now, he's not one of my *speech kids* but the sub-aide had left by now (she had to leave early) and I was the only help. I removed him from the area, sat him down, and looked away, thus ignoring the bad behavior as I have been taught to do. Well, let's just say that over the next 45-60 minutes I was hit and kicked (not hard, he knew better), and screamed at, "Talk to me!" "Don't tell me no!" "Put my shoe back on!" "I want to write an A on the board!" "I want a sticker!" "I want to be good!" and other variations of that theme. This little guy is has a psychiatric diagnosis, of what I do not know. However, it was unreal as well as very sad. He could not regulate his screaming/crying/yelling to calm himself down. Needless to say, I went home with a headache and questioning my actions with him and how the situation was handled. Rough afternoon. :(

In an earlier post I mentioned that Dr. MacDonald had said some quotes during the conference that were good enough to write down for remembering later. Here are some of the best ones:
"Common sense is not common behavior." (I think referring to parents playing with their children.)
"If you're not waiting, you're taking up the space that he needs to learn." (again referring to parents playing/talking with their children.)
"Don't expect impossible things. They (children) can't talk adult because they're NOT adults."
"Children are supposed to be learning relationships, not just school skills."
"Children think, 'Love me or hate me, but don't ignore me.' They don't care what kind of attention it is." (talking about not giving attention or talking to bad behavior.)
"My job is to help YOU help your child, my job is not to fix your child."