My first week of my Senior Project went very well. After my first meeting with Janine the Saturday before Senior Project, I was very excited to go and finally meet some of her children. It was very good that she informed me about the conditions of some of these families beforehand, since I had no idea what to expect. In general, I think all the meetings and talks before and after a visit were extremely helpful for me. I could ask all the questions I had and already had an insight on what was going on in the family before I entered their house, so that I knew how to behave and what to expect.
Since I am not allowed to really help Janine with her therapy because I am not a therapist, I observed a lot and learned through this how occupational therapy works. The first day especially was very exciting as I made a lot of new experiences with therapy and was with Janine for the first time. It was interesting to see how she approaches the children, interacts with them, becomes their play-partner, but also establishes this therapeutic environment. One thing that I learned this week was how important it is for Janine to stay the therapist at all times. For many of these families, Janine is the only one that understands them and can help, but it is very important for her to stay on the professional level. In order for her to be able to give certain advise to the families and work with the children, she needs this certain distance.
Overall I have to say that I really like her job. I have always loved children and it is so sad to see these babies who are not able to communicate or move the right way. Being able to help them and see this little smile when they finally do something right and progress, is great. I read the evaluation of some children, so that I knew at what point Janine started working with them and was then able to see the progress they had already made. Before I started shadowing Janine, I had no idea how to get children to move their tongue or help them to learn how to crawl. By catching the children’s attention through playful activities and by using typical toddler’s characteristics such as the need of repetition and imitation, Janine gets them to copy her movements and keep on doing it until they establish a certain muscle memory for it. In cases of disorders like autism, Janine also helps the family to be aware of how their child is special and what it needs.
Because of what I have learned this week, I have made plans with Janine to create an awareness pamphlet of some form for her company. The goal for next week therefore will be to figure out what exactly it will be about and gather more information for that. I will also concentrate more on certain children and go see them again. I am very excited for next week especially since I will have more time, as I don’t have any AP exams anymore. The first week was already awesome and I know that the second one will be great as well.
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