Drawn to... Psych; that's short for Psychology. (: (: (:
Tuesday, 5 June 2007
Better get this load off my chest, first.
Guess what? This Silly Do-Do here...
Failed her BTT. =X
Don't ask why, how or what.
Enough said.
The next test is on 6 July, 2pm. Better Seriously Mug this Time.
Anyway, yes, I'm rather drawn to doing Pychology suddenly or even Social Work.
The volunteering at the Hougang Care Centre reeeeeeeeeeeally sparked that interest.
Pauline and I are currently helping Kai Qi, a social worker who just graduated from NUS FASS a year ago.
She is actually running the Stop, Think and Do programme for children ages 7-9 with some learning and social skills disabilities.
The Stop, Think, Do programme is actually written by this Australian Writer (Whom, I can't recall what the name is!) and it is based on the traffic lights we see on the road.
The idea being we use this simple analogy to guide the kids to STOP when they feel anger, sadness, happiness, fear before they act on their impulse in some disruptive manner. Then we teach them to THINK before they act and lastly DO actions that are positive and non-disruptive.
We started helping out last week. It lasts for 8 sessions and takes place twice a week.
We also met Valerie, another volunteer, she's actually doing her masters on Educational Psychology at NIE. So she's actually placed at the centre now as she's doing her practicum.
We've got 4 charges, Matthew, Tze Yong, Daryl and Clifford.
We have a sort of Sticker collection competition to reward attentiveness and the well-behaved boys. It works like a charm, trust me. =D
I'm taking care of Tze Yong. He's a lovely boy but he does have this problem of speaking out in turn in group discussions. They're all a little hyperactive too.
Clifford and Daryl will actually run around the room and sprawl themselves all over the floor.
To the boys, We seem like we're merely teaching them how to be good boys and having fun with them playing all those games. But really, there are messages embedded within them.
(AND at the same time, we're analysing each individual.)
They actually have difficulty recognising emotions.
This is why sometimes kids with such disobedience issues often repeat their acts of mischief without knowing why or how it even infuriates the adults.
They can't recognise Anger in its' face, quite literally!
It was Clifford that incited that interest, most acutely.
We always have a de-briefing session after the programme to discuss how else can we improve and the cater the programme better for the kids as well as what we have observed about them.
Clifford is actually an interesting person to observe and analyse.
At the start of each session Kai Qi would re-cap the lessons learnt in the previous session with a Q & A.
Clifford sat away from the group but was answering enthusiastically, to the extent of even interrupting others in mid-sentences.
We learnt more about feelings that day and we were sharing about things that made us scared, happy, sad and angry.
Interestingly, Clifford clammed up, shut up, shrugged and gave "Don't Know" for answers.
WHAT A HUGE VAST CONTRAST!
Then we discussed about him.
I was wondering whether he didn't want to share about his emotions IF NOT he didn't know what they were.
Then the senior psychologist came in and she joined in.
She suspected that he wasn't able to express himself verbally about emotions due to his family background. His parents are divorced! 0_O
Usually such kids only know emotions like anger the most as they see their parents waging wars on each other all time.
He hasn't the proper moulding from a model to understand what emotions are, apart from anger that is.
He's actually very intelligent as he could easily regurgitate factual information when we did the Q&A.
Wow.
AND I realised why he was so attached to his doggie pencil box already.
He does have a pet dog at home, you know. He does spend a lot of time with it.
And you know... Pet Animals do assuage that loneliness within you and give you unconditional Love.
That's why he's so attached to his Dog. WOW. =D
I'm really curious about psychology.
I think I know what I'm pursuing in my Minors. =D
1:52 pm
