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Listening: SoundTeMP - Amaranth
Reading: 1 Corinthians 12: 7 [CEV]
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The Spirit has given each of us a special way of serving others.Yea, that was the verse my cell leader showed me. So that I won't keep the visions He gave me to myself. =x
Yesterday, I went to serve at the church's children ministry during 2nd service. Two words: DAMN FUN.
The children ministry consists of 3 divisions, which they call: David Club (18 months to 4 years old), Timothy Club (K1 to K2 and Primary 1 to 3, 5 to 9 years old)) and Barnabas Club (Primary 4 to 6, 10 to 12 years old). I stuck with the special children this week. It was fun being with them.
Let's see, the one who I was with most of the time was a girl with intellectual disability (in short, it is called ID). The first time you meet her, you would think that she is quite normal: She is adorable, sweet-looking (very sweet), responsive, polite, helpful and such. She seems completely different from the rest of the boys there. And yes, she is the only girl amongst the group of special children.
But her main problem is this, she isn't as smart, is slow in learning, and she can get bullied easily. I noticed that she had a problem fixing very simple puzzles. She would also ignore you whenever she is ask an open-ended question: any question that requires her to express what she thinks. Though, she answers yes/no questions very promptly.
There is another boy with ID, who always bullies her. (He doesn't know what he does is called bullying though.) He would pinch her cheeks, press her head in between his palms, poke her face, pull her ears and so on. (Thank goodness, nothing physically harmful.) Yet she does not respond to him at all. She would just continue whatever she is doing--just standing or sitting there or talking to him and letting him do whatever he wants to her. Whenever we catch him doing that, we scold him and make him apologize to her. He does so after a while, but as usual, there is no response from her.
Mum tells me that her parents insist on sending her to normal school. There, the kids would always shout at her and push and hit her because she is easy to bully. And she doesn't know that it is wrong for people to do that to her so she doesn't defend herself. That is the reason why we don't put her with normal kids in church--she is slow, and would lag behind in absorbing information, and the other children would either scold or isolate her.
Speaking of the boy with ID, I am going to say that he is one of the most self-obsessed, ego-maniacal kid I've ever met. During colouring session, he was the first to finish colouring his picture. (Actually, none of them could colour properly. They are all colouring worse than what other children their age are capable of.) Then, he would turn the paper around and start drawing a face. When asked: "Who is that?" He would say his own name. He drew another picture, and says that is himself too. Everything he draws is himself. He is the only person he ever draws. O__O Fantastic ego, isn't it? To top that, he is extremely greedy and kiasu, grabbing several colour pencils at a time during colouring session, grabbing a whole handful of twisties to eat at a go and so on. Greedy.
Though, I have a feeling that his self-esteem stems from his water bottle. He clings to it most of the time. Getting him to obey you is a simple task of taking his water bottle while he misplaces it somewhere and telling him, "If you don't listen, I will throw away your water bottle" or if he still has it, you can put your hand on the bottle and say, "If you don't listen, I will take your water bottle away". And after that, whatever you say, he listens.
But really, these two are completely easy to look after when compared to the autistic boys. The first one I was assigned to look after (because Galvin wasn't around yet) is very active. His senses are haywire, especially to touch. He would often sit and start drumming on the floor or chair with his hands. When I tried to get him to sit down and stop running about, he would giggle, hold my hands to put them on his chest and lean back on me. (I grab him from behind.) He is small, so I can easily push him back and make him sit.
I was told not to let him or any of the boys get too physically close. They can cling all they want to the guy helpers, but not the girl helpers. Right now at their age, they don't know that it isn't right for them to hug females and they do that unreservedly, but it would be bad for them if they were to carry their habits to their teenage years.
After I got him to sit, he kept taking my hands and putting them on his face, making them move all over his face. Damn I was so scared I would poke his eyeballs out. His sense of touch is off, so he must have liked hands on his face very much. Half a minute later, he threw my hands off his, got up, and ran around laughing. Near the
sound equipment. (Electricity and wires, oh joy.) When I caught up, he ran to the back of the room and lied down. I couldn't get him up, because he took my out-stretched hands to cover his face again. (OMG OMG eyeballs eyeballs!!)
Thank goodness, I was rescued by Justine. She shows him small placards and said to him, "Look, look, STAND." The card had a picture a figure standing, like the male toilet sign. He saw it and stood.
There was another boy with autism. He is very active/violent. I watched a lot of wrestling matches between him and Galvin. Getting him to sit still was a challenge. He kept on taking off his sticker-nametag and pasting it everywhere. When my adorable little girl with ID got pasted on, she tried to paste it back on him, and got kicked. O_o I was like: ZOMG you kicked a girl!! ; ___ ; As usual, she didn't care, and went back to paste his nametag back on him anyway. Yea, he has a habit of using his feet a lot. Thank goodness, everywhere he goes, he would kick off his sandals. He doesn't like having them on.
I noticed, that he is very good at fixing puzzles. He finished a hard one (hard for children his age) very fast. He gets pretty selfish though, and he doesn't know how to share the toys. My poor girl... ; ___ ; There was once where he wanted the whole box of stationery, and the special needs specialist refused to give it to him. So he tried to bite her. And when she didn't let him bite her, he started biting himself. Super placard to the rescue. (It says "NO BITING", and has a picture of a mouth with teeth, and a cross over it.)
Getting him to share was funny. He had a whole box of twisties. So we thought we would try to teach him how to share by asking him for it. He would ignore all requests at first, and after some persuasion, he would hand ONE solo twistie to the asker. It was the smallest twistie he could find. =x Ahh oh wells. A mini tiny one is better than none--it is a start is learning to share. ^ ^
I've learnt my lesson with autistic boys: let the guy helpers handle them. Females don't have the strength to wrestle them.
*scrolls up* Wahhh so long. Finishing already~
One activity which I found interesting was the blanket one. We would have all the children sit together in the center, then spread a huge light blue bedsheet over them, with us helpers holding the sides of it. Like this:
Then, we would sing them songs, and at the same time, move the bedsheet up and down. So the kids would have this blue sky over them that keep flowing up and down.
At first, it puzzles me as to why we were doing this. It seems that the children look forward to blanket time every session. Then I realized that the children were relaxed. They kept still, even those with autism, as they stare at the bedsheet go up and down above them, touching it with glee every time it came down low enough for them to touch.
Apparently, it is something which calms them down. Because most of these children are soloist who don't know how to play with other children, this is the only time where you can actually seat them together, close to each other, without a wrestling match going on. There, they can actually talk to each other (about the bedsheet). Usually, each one bothers with his own business and none care for interacting with each other at all (with the exception of the girl). Unless they are fighting over food or colour pencils, of course.
Hmmm that should be all that I have to share. Dinner time now~!!
