Day 13 - Patience and Guerrila Warfare

A run down of this week's gifts:

I stopped by and introduced myself to the owner of the new shop beneath my apartment. It just opened a few weeks ago, and it doesn't seem to be attracting much foot traffic. I wanted to welcome her to the neighborhood and make her day a little less quiet. I tend to avoid meeting new people unless I'm supremely caffeinated and/or need to for work purposes, so it was a nice thing to do with my day.

Guerilla warfare-style: Had a meeting at a coffee-shop. After the meeting was over, I taped a thank-you note to the table we were using. On the inside I wrote: "You did good today. Don't let anyone make you think otherwise." Then I left it for someone to discover.

Biggest gift of the week: patience and a new strategy. I'm an assistant in a pre-school class. One of our 3-year olds is a handful; her mom is pregnant, she's throwing tantrums at home and bullying the kids at school, most likely as a reaction to all the changes that are happening around her. It's been getting worse and worse, and I realized that she needs more adult attention, and most importantly, that it's okay if we give her more attention right now. It's never going to be evenly distributed in the classroom. I also realized she's feeding off of every negative response we give her: our frustration, our lectures, time-out has become insignificant to her. So I enacted Sticker-Shock and Awe - anytime she does anything good I put a sticker right on her shirt (we usually put stickers on a chart on the board) - and anytime she doesn't follow the rules, I quietly walk her to time-out without saying her name, and I ignore her, or I gently rewind and re-do a task with her. Today was a much calmer day for everyone, and I hope things get better at home for her as well.

I think today I'm going to print out an iCarly Christmas card for my nieces and mail it to them as a reminder that Santa's coming in 15 days!!