Last night, Gert and I attended a triage assessment course provided the the local CERT program. Although I have taken this course before, I found there was a lot I had forgotten and it was a great refresher course. Now Gert had never been exposed to this so it was all new to her. Originally she was just going to play games on my phone but quickly decided since everyone was pretending to be hurt she would too -- her first assignment was to play dead!
'I can't hold my breath that long!' So I reassured her that was not what the instructor meant -- just close your eyes and if they ask what is wrong say 'I'm dead.' No big deal right? With her head on my lap and her eyes closed she just laid there until the two gentlemen attempted to move her. She flipped and announced she was nervous and clung to me. Needless to say they moved on. She was just fine. I immediately thought this would be the end of her participation. Right? Wrong! I was dead wrong. When this team's turn was over and our instructor asked how many were tagged green, red, yellow, or black and when they were unable to respond she piped right up and said 5 red, and 1 black. I was shocked that she was paying that close attention to what was going on.
'I can't hold my breath that long!' So I reassured her that was not what the instructor meant -- just close your eyes and if they ask what is wrong say 'I'm dead.' No big deal right? With her head on my lap and her eyes closed she just laid there until the two gentlemen attempted to move her. She flipped and announced she was nervous and clung to me. Needless to say they moved on. She was just fine. I immediately thought this would be the end of her participation. Right? Wrong! I was dead wrong. When this team's turn was over and our instructor asked how many were tagged green, red, yellow, or black and when they were unable to respond she piped right up and said 5 red, and 1 black. I was shocked that she was paying that close attention to what was going on.
Her next assignment was to be one of the walking wounded. No problem at all with that! It also helped that she had met one of the men in Team 2 before. She did exactly what they had her do and she following them around the training room watching intently as they made their assessments. They even used her to assist with a baby by 'keeping it company and make sure it stayed safe.' This also meant that she had to hold the head a certain way which in turn kept the baby alive by keeping the airway open. As each team made their assessments Gert followed right behind them asking many questions as they went. Everyone who was at the training was glad to answer them for her. At the end of the class, she helped gather up all the ribbons and tags, commenting to me that the training was fun and 'You should bring me to more of these!' I just brushed it off with the common response of 'We'll see.' While we were raiding the equipment closet to get various gear and uniforms she announced 'I wanna take CERT and CPR. I want to be able to help someone.' Aw, isn't she sweet? As others were getting new uniforms she asked 'Do you have a green shirt to fit me?'
As we began to walk to our car and then drive home, Gert was non-stop talking about 'if you are green you are good, if you are red you need help now, if you are yellow you can wait but you are in between red and green -- just like a stoplight! But if your black -- well you are just (as she makes the slicing of the throat sign) dead!' She has also decided that she wants to do triage on her babies and stuffed animals. I told her next week we would work on first aid as a part of school. I am amazed at how much information she actually took in! They weren't kidding when they said kids are like sponges. I think I have created a monster! Today we worked on our reading. Although there was some fussing, not as much as usual. I have discovered I have to take reading slower. If I want her to read more I have to have more patience (which is not one of my strong points). I remember a quote something to the fact that patience is the ability to idle your motor when you feel like stripping the gears. With Gert that is an understatement. I have found that if we do our reading in the morning and in the evenings she does much better AND that we have to break the reading up more. I would like to do all the reading at once to get it done, but that of course does not work for her. I have to let her lead a little more when it comes to the reading. Although I still push, I have discovered if I push to hard, we get nothing accomplished and we are both frustrated resulting in me giving in and read everything to her which is not what we are trying to accomplish. We are making progress but it is slow.
I am very proud of her. Before I even had breakfast she had already finished her morning calendar and was starting on the first box of the morning. I needed to finish something for this afternoon and needed to put school off for a couple of hours so she went ahead with both packets of sight words and her math flashcards! Out of about 50+ words she missed maybe 5, which I think is great since we have only been working on them since August 30. I think that is a big accomplishment. Now I don't think she can spell all of them, that will be the next test, but right now I am just glad that she recognizes them as that is helping her with her reading.
We learn many things from our children and just one of those is patience. We tend to get frustrated with our children as things that we see as 'simple' are so very complicated for them. We are often forced to think on their level. I find myself looking up how to teach something just because for me it is easy and the answer is obvious but to a child, they are still learning. Absorbing everything around them. When Gert and/or I get frustrated we have started taking 10 deep breaths. You'd be surprised how well it works. All things are difficult before they are easy and I must remember that; not only for myself, but for my daughter.
Now if she could just pick up reading like she did triage. . .
