My Funny Kiddos

Enjoy this conversation between our speech therapist and a first grade student. This is basically every conversation had with him...

SLP:                What do you want to be when you grow up?

Student:          Uh, I want to be a spy.

SLP:                Tell me about that.

Student:          I don’t want money.  I just want to be a spy.

SLP:                You don’t want to make money?

Student:          I want to be rich when I grow up.  I’m gonna let my mom have my other house

SLP:                What do you mean by your other house?

Student:          I’m gonna buy me a house where she goes and I’m gonna have another house.

SLP:                Tell me about your family.

Student:          My dad used to be a cop.  He is still an undercover cop.  He works at a store.  He has another job where they have a deep freezer.  My mom works at McDonald’s.  She brings home cookies.  My sister is big.  She bosses me around.  She likes to sleep in my bed.  She makes me do her dirty work.

SLP:                What do you mean by that?

Student:          Like pick up her clothes.  I’m not going to do that anymore. 

SLP:                What do you like to do for fun?

Student:          We like to take trips like visit our cousins.  We go to the park.  Me and my dad ride bikes.  We go to the store.  We ride around in the car together.          

SLP:                Do you have a pet?

Student:          No I want a pet, like a dog or a goldfish or a Chihuahua or a parrot.  I’m gonna

Get a goldfish cause they say a dog’s gonna eat me up.  They don’t think I’m gonna take care of my dog.  They don’t trust me.  They think I’m gonna tell my dog to eat up my enemy’s clothes.  What kind of person does that?

SLP:                If you had 3 wishes, what would they be?

Student:          To be rich, have a happy family, not a bossy mother, and a dad that doesn’t whip

Me, and my sister not to make me do her dirty work.  To have my dad not have a mustache and my sister and my mom to have their toes pretty, painted pink or light pink.  That’s it!

You know it's time to go to bed when...drum roll please... you put your dirty dishes in the fridge!

Sympathy

It's finally November! This means that the countdown to Thanksgiving break is getting smaller and temporary relief is within reach.

This week has been rough. I have a lot more responsibility at work this year including training a co-teacher, a larger caseload, teaching more kids with significant disabilities, and managing and training 3 para-educators. It is flattering that they think I'm capable of handling this responsibility and yet completely overwhelming. My major frustrations are not having enough time to do everything I should be doing for my job, needing more staff, and ultimately, having staff that is not implementing what I ask them to do.

I hate conflict and as you know, am very soft spoken. This does not bode well when trying to re-teach paras who are older, strong-tempered, black women and have been able to get by with doing their job half-heartedly before I came along. At first glance, you might think that everything is fine because they say all the right things to my face but they have continued to show a lack of respect for my opinions and experience by complaining to others behind my back and not following through on my instruction. These are women who absolutely love our kids and have strengths that make them good at certain tasks required of them but I'm on year 3 now of fighting the same battles and I'm exhausted. I've talked with administration and they have the same concerns. They are supportive of the next steps that need to be taken so it is not all terrible.

The point of that whole story is that it brought me to think of my students who have been fighting the same battles for years as well and how frustrated they must be. There is one specific student I have in mind. He is 5 years old with limited speech abilities, among other things (and yet has perfected his ability to say the F-bomb--go figure). When I think about all of his inappropriate behavior I can sympathize with the reasons behind it. He is a bright kid and yet hardly anyone can understand him. How maddening this must be! He knows exactly what he's trying to say but people can hardly ever figure it out.

In honor of my kiddos and God who has given me all that I need in eternal life with Him, I am going to make a point to daily focus on what I have to be thankful for and it starts now.
I am thankful for:
1. Salvation in Christ.
2. That my identity does not rest in my job or others opinions of me.
3. That I have a job where I get to do what I love and am supported by administration.
4. My church family.
5. Encouraging friends and family.
6. Financial stability.
7. A washer and dryer! Yippee!!
8. Warm, sunny weather.
9. Being able to be physically active and take on new challenges.
and so much more!

Philippians 4:4-7 (ESV)
"Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."

Isaac

Is it bad that I'm so excited about hurricane days? I already know the answer to that question but I'm still excited. Weekends have been almost non-existent for me with trying to keep up with planning, paperwork, and everyday fires that come up. To top it all off, last week I got a cold, stomach virus, and ringworm from my students. Bring on some hurricane days! Please don't think that I'm being insensitive. My heart hurts for people who are going through this and have been through Katrina. I'm sure there are many fears and memories surfacing. However, I'm excited about getting to reach out to neighbors this week. Please keep the city in your prayers. Pray for fears to be calmed, safety to be maintained, and neighbors to be brought closer together.

Wow

Last night I watched some of the highlights of the Olympics for the day. My favorite event was watching the running. Those people booked it! I think I need to keep video clips of them running to watch while I'm on the treadmill or before I go out for a run. They actually look like what I imagine I look like when I run. Haha. Not that I want to look like them but I admire their dedication. When the running is replayed in slow motion it looks like they are going at warp speed with their faces being pushed against their skull--whereas my pace is comparable to that of a tortoise. What great motivation to keep at it!

Now I'm off to run after kids on their first day back to school.

Life

A friend recently asked me to share my testimony with them so I thought I would share with you all too. This is how it goes:

My story is a true testament to God's grace. I'm so thankful when I look back and see how he has been at work in my life.

I asked God to live in my heart when I was 6 years old. I was blessed to grow up with Christian parents and an amazing church family. My parents were faithful in attending church. My mom was also faithful in having her quiet times in the morning and modeling repentance constantly. She even had my siblings and I do a mother’s day out program where we picked a mom to go help during the summer so that we could see other parents sinning and repenting.

When I was 13, I was in a car accident with my mom and 12 year old sister, Rachael. Rachael was killed on impact. Losing my sister was traumatic. This was the first point in my life where I really remember struggling with my faith. During high school, I looked to other things like relationships and food to find comfort and identity. At the end of high school, God began opening my eyes to recognize my idols and stripped me of a bad relationship I was in. I clung tightly to that relationship and it was hard to let it go. However, God was gracious by providing me with many other great relationships with Christian friends and another great church family when I went to college. In college I was struggling a lot with how to forgive myself for past sins. I didn’t really know what it meant to live by grace and not by works.

During the summer after my sophomore year of college, I interned at a church in Bay St Louis, MS and did hurricane relief work. It was a place of brokenness. The town, church facilities, and people living there were all hurting. Their philosophy was that it is okay to not be okay. That was a new concept for me. Being from the South, everyone is okay if you ask them--I was taken aback when people in MS actually responded with anything that was honest. They were being real and that scared me because I knew what my real self was like and I wasn't okay with showing it. We were also encouraged/forced to bring our grievances against others out into the open (they called it “festivus” in case you’re a Seinfeld fan). Even if you were good at pretending that you were okay, we were working and living in such close quarters that you were bound to be confronted about something. It was revitalizing to have people know your faults, even confront you about them, and experience grace and forgiveness from them instead of trying to hide your faults and pretend that you are fine. We were constantly being confronted with our sins then the gospel. It was incredible—I don’t really know how else to describe it. That summer was the first time that I felt myself let go of the sins from my past and move on. I felt so free.

During college, I lost a couple of other friends as well. One friend committed suicide and another friend was taken in a car accident. Losing so many people close to me has been something that I continue to struggle with. Since so much in my life was out of my control, I’ve tried that much harder to control things. I worry about a lot of things instead of trusting God to take care of it and use it for His glory. I am constantly working to hand things over to Him and it terrifies me. God is gracious though and continues to provide what is best for me even when I don’t know what it is. I see this in how he has saved me from past relationships, how he brought me to live in New Orleans when I didn’t want to, in providing my current job when I didn’t even want to work in a charter school, and how he is providing everything I need in order to start foster parenting.

God is good all the time!

Winding Down

My summer has officially come to an end. It's amazing how quickly it goes. I enjoyed all of my travels visiting family and friends. I feel blessed to be able to catch up with people during the summer because I am so bad at doing it during the school year.

When I got back to NOLA I was finally able to track down my home development worker. She came out and did my first home visit--just glanced around to make sure I had enough room for kids. Now she should be sending out my reference letters as I try to schedule my finger printing and wait for my last two home visits. The process probably won't be finished until the end of August at the earliest but I'm so excited that things are finally moving along again.

Visiting my friends with young children this summer provided some perspective on parenting. Illness, fidgety eaters, kids needing naps, poop...need I say more? These are all things that I know are realities of dealing with kids. I deal with these things with my students all the time but it freaks me out a bit knowing that I'll be dealing with it at home by myself too. Right now my fear is balanced by excitement. I pray that the excitement of ministering to these kiddos continues once the realities of parenting hits.

"Save us, we pray, O Lord! O Lord, we pray, give us success!" (Psalm 118:25 ESV)

"Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever" (Psalm 136:1 ESV)