Welcome to my chaos

Hey Y'all! Thanks for all your support during the LSATs. I stuck it to them.

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I'm hoping that you missed me. BUT I have a very good reason.  

My life has been in total chaos the last two weeks. 

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Let me tell you why.

My routine changed. 

I moved out of my dorm room, the place where I have been living for the last 10 months. This means I had to find a new place for all of my stuff. In the end, I went to the airport with two bags weighing more than 120 pounds total.

People were graduating, and moving on with their life. This means I won't see many of them for a very long time. Some of them I may never see again.

Classes ended, and along with them the predictable schedule of studying and classwork I love my predictable schedule.

My life has changed.

Which got me to thinking about a question I got from stark. raving. mad. mommy. 

What advice would you give a teacher about introducing new people and changes to routine in the classroom? About helping a student through upsets in class? 

Great question!

So, if you are NNT, the world is kind of unpredictable.

If you poke them, they will cry.

Honestly, things that most people find predictable, I find less so. I think this comes from the fact that I miss a lot of non verbal cues from people. They see things that give them a more complete view of the world than I do.

Once something new happens I automatically think about the worst thing that could happen. Then I think about everything  else that could possibly happen. EVERYTHING.

And then I'm exhausted.

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The older I get the more I can tell myself

Self that is a dumb thought that is not helpful. Squids will not walk out of the ocean because you tried calamari.

If you know this reference, we are friends.

But as a kid, it's a little harder to predict what is going on in your world. You simply don't have the same amount of experience that you do as an adult. Also, as a kid you don't have as much control over what you do in your life. Parents, teachers and baby sitters pretty much control where you are and who your with all the time.

If I could go back in time and give advice to the teachers and babysitters who were in charge of me I would ask them to predict the world for me.

Microwave= Time machine

If you can make the world more predictable for those of us whose world is less than predictable then we will have less meltdowns and be happier.

Meltdowns in cases of changes I think come from the emotion and anxiety brought on by not being able to understand these changes.

I would start early, way before a major change is going to happen. I would also be prepared to talk about what is going to happen again before the change happens.

Discuss what this change means in a classroom. Does it change the hours that you do things? Does it change who gets attention from the teacher? What doesn't it change? Is lunch going to be at the same time? Where is the bathroom going to be?

Why are you doing that

Can you develop some skills that will help the child predict similar changes in the future? For example, if you have half days on the third Friday of every month, would setting up a calendar and marking off the days help make that more predictable?

The more you can make a child's world view complete, the happier they will be. And after all, happiness is the end goal.

AWW