Gerd's comments about my video with Dusya

Ladies, I had a GREAT consultation yesterday with Gerd, a wonderful SonRise teacher. Here is his feedback about Dusya and in the next posting you have his feedback about Liam.

First of all, here are my videos with Dusya:
http://www.vimeo.com/14579467 (1 minute)
http://www.vimeo.com/14579569 (9 minutes)

He told me he noticed three main things from the video:

POINT #1:
Dusya’s attention is span is so much longer. The main jest of her attention went to ME. Gerd mentioned that Dusya’s attention stayed on ME 90% of the time. That was very different from the previous videos Gerd had seen about Dusya about five months ago. He said that it is amazing when a kid discovers how much fun people are and that that interest in people opens many opportunities

Gerd thought it was great that I had stickers on my face. He thought that even if we had so many puppets around, the stickers helped to keep the attention on ME.

Gerd’s main advice was to be careful that we don’t guide Dusya’s attention away from PEOPLE. The puppets are just an extension of US. Big bird cannot become bigger than US. The emphasis needs to be on US always.

POINT #2:
Gerd noticed that I had an INTENTION of what I wanted to do in the playroom. He said it was very important to always have an intention. The game was to take stickers out of my face and to put them somewhere else.

Gerd noticed that there was a moment when Duchis was losing attention. The QUALITY of her attention started to go down. She became more lethargic, more comfy on the floor. He said it was great that I made her move.

An idea he gave me that I could have used in that moment when she was become more lethargic was:
*The game would consist of putting the sticker in different places in the room. For example, the room could be a zoo and the stickers could be animal stickers. One corner could be for the monkeys, or another corner for the birds, etc. So, she would have to find appropriate places in the room for the animals to go. It would be a matching game using the imagination to put animals around the room. That way I could get her to move.

POINT #3:
Gerd told me to be observant of where her motivation is. He said that be biggest laughs were when we were plopping and when Big Bird was screaming. I told him that she loves funny sound, silly faces, screams, being scared, blahing, etc, etc.

I told her that sometimes I did not know what new thing to do with blahing and that it may be becoming repetitive. Gerd said that we just need to think of creative combinations or variations of the blahing, and that I should not judge it as repetitive. He said that she is CLEARLY motivated towards that, so we could use the sounds to make a DEAL: “you do something for me and I will scream the loudest scream you have ever seen”.

He also told me that it is great that she is interested in all these funny things because it is very age appropriate. He said that kids usually around 5 years old are interested in funny sounds, slapstick humor, forbidden words, etc. He said it speaking developmentally, this is a great milestone in her development and it comes at the right age.

His final comment was: “Boy, her attention is just staying with you beautifully; this is a wonderful achievement, a reason to celebrate.”