You are doing the best you can, and that’s enough ❤️
As i was working, I heard crying sound
Today vaishnavi woke up crying
She had wet her pants
I looked at the clock and it was 5.30am. I wake up at 4.30 and it’s my precious 3 hours.
I use these 3 hours to pray, jog, meditate and write Brainbow syllabus, contents and lesson plans.
I took a deep breath. I used to get so annoyed when this happened previously.
This is how I handle it now.
I showed empathy by just calling her out by her name and said “You are safe, Amma is here to help you.” I offered my hands and held on to it as we walked to the bathroom to clean up.
She continues to cry as she is worried she has wet her bed. With her permission, I went back to her room and checked the bed and informed her that it was not wet.
She starts to calm down.
Here I want to state that I am aware of Vaishnavi’s strengths. One of them is that she is Prudent, she can be extremely careful naturally. She has a very good imagination and she calculates all risks before acting.
Many who do not recognize this as strength will label children like her a Perfectionist.
This strength has helped her work on her emotion regulation skills very efficiently.
Here you need to be curious to learn more about your child’s strengths and weaknesses.
Let’s go back to the story.
Vaishnavi then stated that she wanted to sleep somewhere else as she didn’t trust that her bed wasn’t wet:) I became curious and asked her where?
I kind of figured out that she wants to sleep with me, so I asked her which room. “We have 3 rooms. One big bear is sleeping. In this house there are 3 bears”. She likes the papa bear, mama bear, baby bear story. By time now she had stopped crying
So here, it helps to speak your child’s language not your language. And yelling is never going to help.
As we walked back to the room, she started crying saying that she wants me. I told her that I want her too and would love to help. I told her I will grab my laptop and come back to the room. I sat at her bed as she dozed off back to sleep. She self-regulates by touching her earlobes.
20 minutes later, I am out of her room back to my morning routine.
How do you respond to setbacks and bounce forward from adversity and disappointments?
Our children are watching us.
Last week in class, we were making a Dodo Bird sculpture out of wire and paper. It didn’t go well at all. Nearly 95% of students faced difficulties. Students who normally excel were disappointed. They even started to switch off their camera on zoom. Nemo and I were breathing it out as we tried to keep the class together.
One student, Sanvikka, said “Teacher Denee, mine looks like a potato!”.
And yes, we changed the objective of the lesson from Dodobird to “unknown extinct animal”. Slowly one by one students named their sculpture. We had wise worms, mr potato, snakey, chicken little and many more.
Yesterday Zhou Xin and Xin Tian’s mum sent me the photos of their artwork, and I said sometimes it’s good to fail and fail really bad at it and then get up. She said it’s so true as she tried to help out because the girls were not doing their work well. When she tried it and had difficulties she realized that she made a mistake.
Zhou Xin told her that she had tried her best and this is what she can do.
This is what we strive to achieve in Brainbow.
Progress over Perfection
We don’t bounce back, we bounce forward.
Try not to take over your children’s artwork in Brainbow. We are building their mindset through art. It’s not about the artwork.
Like Shakira sang;
I want to try everything
I want to try even though I could fail
I’ll keep on making those new mistakes
I’ll keep on making them every day
Those new mistakes
