(no subject)
so much of this blog is dedicated to the bad moments and trying to be better, which is maybe the asian in me talking, but last week was maybe the first time since i've become an st that i seriously though about quitting the field forever, but then i read somewhere that you should never quit on a bad day, so it feels like i should maybe be making a record of a good day, as a reminder.
because today was a long-ass, difficult-to-get-through day, but was also rewarding in all the best ways possible. i love being a supervisor, i love sharing my experiences and trying to learn to read not just the children, but the people i'm mentoring, and figuring out when i should step in and when it's okay to hold back, and how much of what they're doing is down to style and personal preferences, and how much is due to inexperience that maybe needs to be addressed. that's always a struggle, maybe will always be a struggle - i think anyone in this line must do it at least in part because of the instinctual need to help when someone needs it - but this week my supervisee literally did the exact thing i wanted to step in to do, only i reined myself in and didn't, and two minutes later she got there all on her own, four separate times. i remember the first time a supervisor said to me every time i thought about telling you to try something, you went ahead and did it, and how good it felt, and it was so. awesome. to get to do that for someone else today.
and i guess the longer i do this, the less i remember how much skill and effort it takes. i do a good job of reminding myself that i am actually good at this, and that i'm good because i know that i don't know what i'm doing, i'm just making the best guesses i can and coming up with maybe more creative solutions than some of the other people around me would be able to, but it's also a nice thing to hear, sometimes, when other people see that i am actually good at this?
just having the parent point out to me today that there were things i was doing that he didn't think i would be able to do (mostly because of his expectation of what his child can and cannot do), and that he saw me able to do it "seamlessly" (which is maybe the loveliest praise i've ever gotten from a parent) felt really good. it's easy to forget that maybe not everyone can read their child's signals as well as i've learnt to, and i know i learnt it from some of the most skilled people i will maybe ever meet. i'm nowhere near as good as they are - i will never be literal magic when it comes to making children like me - but the fact that someone might look at me and also feel that sense of "holy shit she really knows what she's doing" is a nice confidence boost. the fact that i didn't think his child was difficult to handle (quote-unquote), and that i didn't feel like i had to try to move him through the activities we were doing just made it all a million times better. all i did was pull out toys he's probably never gotten to play with before, that left more room for imaginative play and language stimulation, and modelled how to play with them in ways that i thought he would probably be interested in, while quietly putting away the toys that he had already finished with so he wouldn't get distracted by them again. none of those things took much effort on my part, a lot of it i did so instinctively i wouldn't even have remembered i did it until the parent pointed it all out one specific example at a time.
and he was such a well-educated parent, too. he knew all about regulation and the building blocks to communication, and he understood, at least in theory, that there were lots of pre-verbal skills we'd need to work on before we could actually get any language work out of the way, so the parent education bit also felt amazing. and i could think about actively reinforcing the things he was doing that were good and gently re-directing him away from things that maybe we'd want to see less of, and it just felt--really good. sometimes i think about how little impact i'm making in the grand scheme of things, and this becomes the most depressing field to be in ever, but then a conversation like this, seeing a parent really feel seen and understood, and knowing that this child's life is definitely going to be impacted, hopefully for the better--that's why this is also the best field in the world?? it's a frustrating, invigorating dichotomy. days like today i wouldn't trade it for anything.
and then getting to talk to my colleague/semi-supervisee afterwards about what i'd done and why i'd done it - honestly if i could think and talk about my thought processes all day, i would, so that's probably also why i enjoy supervision so much. it's so clear to me how fresh i am at it just going off how much i think about myself and what i'm doing during the process, rather than focusing on the supervisee and what they're doing, and it feels lightyears away from when i did the same thing with my little people clients, but i think it's just a process i'm going to have to go through. and hopefully i get to enjoy every minute of it, because the trade off of basically having a full client/people-facing 6-8 hour work day every day, 4 days a week, is really taking a toll. but those are thoughts for the bad days.
it was just nice to hear from a colleague (junior or not) that there were still things i was doing or things i was noticing that she hadn't. that works both ways - she pointed out things that i hadn't picked up on - but having her point out things like when i noticed he was echolalic, or how i spoke to the parent about the possibility of attending a non-mainstream school just 60 minutes into our first meeting, was a really nice way to think about the little bag of tricks i've started to accumulate for myself. i think personality plays a part overall, and just a genuine interest in wanting to help the child and help parents understand their child, and also just having a pretty good communication style in general, has really helped me. and i get to do so much of it intuitively that trying to put it all down into words or any semblance of order is really difficult, so days like today feel like a good starting point.
i don't know, it took maybe 3 years of full time practice for the impostor syndrome to sort of go away? and there are still days, almost 6 years in, that i still feel like "why would you trust me with your child???? i wouldn't trust me with your child." so it's nice, once in a while, to get these unexpected reminders that maybe this isn't a complete wash, and that i do love what i do, and there's a really good reason for that.
ETA: ALSO, HEY. NSYNC. WHAT UP.
i love this job but if they're reuniting for a world tour i'm quitting and flying out to every single stop.
because today was a long-ass, difficult-to-get-through day, but was also rewarding in all the best ways possible. i love being a supervisor, i love sharing my experiences and trying to learn to read not just the children, but the people i'm mentoring, and figuring out when i should step in and when it's okay to hold back, and how much of what they're doing is down to style and personal preferences, and how much is due to inexperience that maybe needs to be addressed. that's always a struggle, maybe will always be a struggle - i think anyone in this line must do it at least in part because of the instinctual need to help when someone needs it - but this week my supervisee literally did the exact thing i wanted to step in to do, only i reined myself in and didn't, and two minutes later she got there all on her own, four separate times. i remember the first time a supervisor said to me every time i thought about telling you to try something, you went ahead and did it, and how good it felt, and it was so. awesome. to get to do that for someone else today.
and i guess the longer i do this, the less i remember how much skill and effort it takes. i do a good job of reminding myself that i am actually good at this, and that i'm good because i know that i don't know what i'm doing, i'm just making the best guesses i can and coming up with maybe more creative solutions than some of the other people around me would be able to, but it's also a nice thing to hear, sometimes, when other people see that i am actually good at this?
just having the parent point out to me today that there were things i was doing that he didn't think i would be able to do (mostly because of his expectation of what his child can and cannot do), and that he saw me able to do it "seamlessly" (which is maybe the loveliest praise i've ever gotten from a parent) felt really good. it's easy to forget that maybe not everyone can read their child's signals as well as i've learnt to, and i know i learnt it from some of the most skilled people i will maybe ever meet. i'm nowhere near as good as they are - i will never be literal magic when it comes to making children like me - but the fact that someone might look at me and also feel that sense of "holy shit she really knows what she's doing" is a nice confidence boost. the fact that i didn't think his child was difficult to handle (quote-unquote), and that i didn't feel like i had to try to move him through the activities we were doing just made it all a million times better. all i did was pull out toys he's probably never gotten to play with before, that left more room for imaginative play and language stimulation, and modelled how to play with them in ways that i thought he would probably be interested in, while quietly putting away the toys that he had already finished with so he wouldn't get distracted by them again. none of those things took much effort on my part, a lot of it i did so instinctively i wouldn't even have remembered i did it until the parent pointed it all out one specific example at a time.
and he was such a well-educated parent, too. he knew all about regulation and the building blocks to communication, and he understood, at least in theory, that there were lots of pre-verbal skills we'd need to work on before we could actually get any language work out of the way, so the parent education bit also felt amazing. and i could think about actively reinforcing the things he was doing that were good and gently re-directing him away from things that maybe we'd want to see less of, and it just felt--really good. sometimes i think about how little impact i'm making in the grand scheme of things, and this becomes the most depressing field to be in ever, but then a conversation like this, seeing a parent really feel seen and understood, and knowing that this child's life is definitely going to be impacted, hopefully for the better--that's why this is also the best field in the world?? it's a frustrating, invigorating dichotomy. days like today i wouldn't trade it for anything.
and then getting to talk to my colleague/semi-supervisee afterwards about what i'd done and why i'd done it - honestly if i could think and talk about my thought processes all day, i would, so that's probably also why i enjoy supervision so much. it's so clear to me how fresh i am at it just going off how much i think about myself and what i'm doing during the process, rather than focusing on the supervisee and what they're doing, and it feels lightyears away from when i did the same thing with my little people clients, but i think it's just a process i'm going to have to go through. and hopefully i get to enjoy every minute of it, because the trade off of basically having a full client/people-facing 6-8 hour work day every day, 4 days a week, is really taking a toll. but those are thoughts for the bad days.
it was just nice to hear from a colleague (junior or not) that there were still things i was doing or things i was noticing that she hadn't. that works both ways - she pointed out things that i hadn't picked up on - but having her point out things like when i noticed he was echolalic, or how i spoke to the parent about the possibility of attending a non-mainstream school just 60 minutes into our first meeting, was a really nice way to think about the little bag of tricks i've started to accumulate for myself. i think personality plays a part overall, and just a genuine interest in wanting to help the child and help parents understand their child, and also just having a pretty good communication style in general, has really helped me. and i get to do so much of it intuitively that trying to put it all down into words or any semblance of order is really difficult, so days like today feel like a good starting point.
i don't know, it took maybe 3 years of full time practice for the impostor syndrome to sort of go away? and there are still days, almost 6 years in, that i still feel like "why would you trust me with your child???? i wouldn't trust me with your child." so it's nice, once in a while, to get these unexpected reminders that maybe this isn't a complete wash, and that i do love what i do, and there's a really good reason for that.
ETA: ALSO, HEY. NSYNC. WHAT UP.
i love this job but if they're reuniting for a world tour i'm quitting and flying out to every single stop.