Hey everybody.
Oh, I guess I should have thrown an exclamation mark on the end of that. Round 2:
Hey everybody!
Much better.
(As a matter of full disclosure, I just lived through a massive Texas A&M choke job against UCLA, so I'm still in a state of shock/I totally knew this would happen)
Well, a lot has happened in the past 2 weeks since I wrote anything, so here goes nothing.
Yesterday, we had class #5, which was about 2 subjects: Correction and trans-racial adoption. The first part of the class was interesting, but not in the whole "oh, thats so interesting! Please tell me more", but more of a dot-dot-dot type of interesting, as in "ummm, you want me to feed the person sitting next to me that I don't really know? Interesting..." Yes, thats right. We were asked to feed the person next to us. This exercise was meant to teach children about boundaries, self-control, personal space, those kinds of things. So here is what happened: we watched a video where children had straws, long straws FYI, and they would take the straw, then ask their neighbor if they could feed them a piece of candy. They would in turn take the straw and place a Gummi Life-Saver on the end of it and then use the straw to place the candy in their neighbors mouth, thereby showing the children that they had to ask permission to be in someone's personal space and that they had the opportunity to say "no" if they weren't comfortable. Well, our class decided that we would be partnered up with someone who wasn't our spouse/partner, so a complete stranger, and then instead of the aforementioned long straws and candy, we were given pretzel sticks and grapes. So, imagine going to Sam's and the lady says "would you like to try this pulled pork sample?" and instead of giving you little cup she grabs it with her fingers and you open your mouth and in it goes. I'm pretty sure most of us would call the manager and start yelling "I NEED AN ADULT!" But no, we trudged along and did it. It was interesting....We also learned about Nurture Groups where the child is gathered in a group and then have the opportunity to talk about how they feel, which is where the Band-Aid comes in. So, you have a band-aid then ask the child if they have any "hurts", either physically or emotionally, and you ask them where it hurts and then say "can I put this band-aid where it hurts?" and you place the band-aid where they say. Yeah, we did this one too. So my feeding partner got to put a band-aid on me as well. Like I said, that portion was interesting. The other subject we talked about I was much more interested in, Trans-racial adoption. This is something that Amanda and I are likely to encounter since we didn't have any sort of request for our child's ethnicity. Some folks in our class do have a specific preferences, but for lack of a better-term, we went pot-luck, and this is where raising a kid in Killeen has its advantages. Being a child in a transracial environment isn't all that rare here. The folks in the class were spouting about Austin being a melting pot, but I don't think any of them had any idea what living and growing up in Killeen is like. Worrying about the kid being the odd child out because their parents are white and they aren't isn't really one that is going to keep me up at night. The worry I will have is trying to have the right amount of empathy and understanding of what their non-white life must be like, and we could all use more empathy and understanding. Which brings us the the other major development of the past 2 weeks.
Oh, I guess I should have thrown an exclamation mark on the end of that. Round 2:
Hey everybody!
Much better.
(As a matter of full disclosure, I just lived through a massive Texas A&M choke job against UCLA, so I'm still in a state of shock/I totally knew this would happen)
Well, a lot has happened in the past 2 weeks since I wrote anything, so here goes nothing.
Yesterday, we had class #5, which was about 2 subjects: Correction and trans-racial adoption. The first part of the class was interesting, but not in the whole "oh, thats so interesting! Please tell me more", but more of a dot-dot-dot type of interesting, as in "ummm, you want me to feed the person sitting next to me that I don't really know? Interesting..." Yes, thats right. We were asked to feed the person next to us. This exercise was meant to teach children about boundaries, self-control, personal space, those kinds of things. So here is what happened: we watched a video where children had straws, long straws FYI, and they would take the straw, then ask their neighbor if they could feed them a piece of candy. They would in turn take the straw and place a Gummi Life-Saver on the end of it and then use the straw to place the candy in their neighbors mouth, thereby showing the children that they had to ask permission to be in someone's personal space and that they had the opportunity to say "no" if they weren't comfortable. Well, our class decided that we would be partnered up with someone who wasn't our spouse/partner, so a complete stranger, and then instead of the aforementioned long straws and candy, we were given pretzel sticks and grapes. So, imagine going to Sam's and the lady says "would you like to try this pulled pork sample?" and instead of giving you little cup she grabs it with her fingers and you open your mouth and in it goes. I'm pretty sure most of us would call the manager and start yelling "I NEED AN ADULT!" But no, we trudged along and did it. It was interesting....We also learned about Nurture Groups where the child is gathered in a group and then have the opportunity to talk about how they feel, which is where the Band-Aid comes in. So, you have a band-aid then ask the child if they have any "hurts", either physically or emotionally, and you ask them where it hurts and then say "can I put this band-aid where it hurts?" and you place the band-aid where they say. Yeah, we did this one too. So my feeding partner got to put a band-aid on me as well. Like I said, that portion was interesting. The other subject we talked about I was much more interested in, Trans-racial adoption. This is something that Amanda and I are likely to encounter since we didn't have any sort of request for our child's ethnicity. Some folks in our class do have a specific preferences, but for lack of a better-term, we went pot-luck, and this is where raising a kid in Killeen has its advantages. Being a child in a transracial environment isn't all that rare here. The folks in the class were spouting about Austin being a melting pot, but I don't think any of them had any idea what living and growing up in Killeen is like. Worrying about the kid being the odd child out because their parents are white and they aren't isn't really one that is going to keep me up at night. The worry I will have is trying to have the right amount of empathy and understanding of what their non-white life must be like, and we could all use more empathy and understanding. Which brings us the the other major development of the past 2 weeks.
The agency emailed us and asked if we would take in 2 foster children for respite, meaning that their foster family would not be able to care for them for an extended period of time and they would need to be placed the temporary care of another family. So, a pre-k and kinder aged child will be with us for a few weeks in October. I feel like this will be an amazing test to see how we handle all that unfolds. We've got to get beds, get CPR trained, just get our mess together and I'm trying to repress the worry and keep all inside, just like an emotionally suppressed person is supposed to do. I'm know it will be great, but...
So, thats about it. I'll see you guys next weekend.
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