Volunteering

This summer, I'm volunteering for the fourth time (I've done two previous full semesters and one summer session) at my school's nursery for hearing impaired infants and toddlers. Being a family-centered program, the children get lots of attention from graduate students, clinical supervisors and undergrad volunteers like myself while their parents go to a support group lead by a renowned professor.

In previous sessions, I had been paired with a toddler with hydrocephalus/CP. I assisted in his transition from the infant room to the toddler room, so that he could have a consistent person there with him every week. I help him in reaching for toys, moving around the room, and went with him to his short, individual therapy rooms. It was a wonderful experience, especially as a freshman. It helped me to develop a clear sense of what therapy is like.

This summer, I'm stationed in infant room again, though I try to sneak peeks into the toddler room, because one of the babies I had in two years ago is now a walking, talking big girl! She has moderate-severe hearing loss in both ears and has had hearing aids since I first met her when she was six months old. Her speech is just beautiful and like any toddler, she speaks her mind! We briefly fed baby dolls together recently and but she wanted to feed mine so she told me, "I'm going to feed BOTH now. Thank you."

I really enjoy being in the baby room, mostly because there is no agenda, we just get to play! But also, since the summer session just began, the toddler room isn't running so smoothly. The student-clinicians are still getting the hang of watching only their assigned child, which is difficult, because the kids want to interact with everyone. When a child goes unwatched for more than .2 seconds, the educator in the room often shouts at whichever student clinician is nearest to her to drop whatever she's been doing so the child will not go without enrichment any longer.

The nanny in me knows that kids this age often like to explore on their own, but I realize that parents (who are often observing through the one-way mirror) are paying a lot of money for their children to be enrolled.

I suppose this experience has taught me a few things:
1) I love babies. I'm totally content to hold a baby for hours, read him a few books, blow bubbles, sing/sign songs, and feed him.
2) I don't love toddler classrooms. While I believe that day care is certainly beneficial for kids, cramming all kinds of activities (which require numerous, big production-type, transitions) into a two-hour time slot just isn't practical. In our program, there is free play, focused-free play (where the clinicians try to keep their clients doing one activity while others pull their kids out for therapy), then snack which includes songs and a book reading while everyone is supposed to sit and eat quietly, clean-up time, teacher's choice (one clinician executes a group therapy activity like learning some new signs or words), music time, mom and dad time (parents come in for a big group sing a-long). I guess I wish we could just get rid of snack time. The kids aren't usually hungry, but they never hesitate to make a big mess that sends the educator into a Wipey-wielding frenzy!