Is Splendific a Word?

Good Morning, and a special hi to Deb. Thanks for keeping me on my toes! We’ve been over at the other journal for the Masters’ work trying to finish out the semester. It officially ends on Sunday. I only have left now to write a reflective paper due on Saturday, midnight for the lifespan course, then on Sunday I need to wrap up the writing course by completing a portfolio of all the stuff we’ve been doing in that course. Big project, but since it is the last, we should be ok. We are being heavily encouraged by its completion signifying SCHOOL VACATION!!!

We’ve been in pretty good shape emotionally since our last bout of whatever it was. I feel very free now in thinking I have a whole 45 minutes to write before I’m expected to leave for work. Although, Dr. M. & V. Are both out of town, I am handling things pretty well. It has helped significantly, taking off some time from work this week. I went in Monday for a meeting, yesterday all day including the staff training meeting, and I’ll go in a half day today, so I can cover the Thinking Group meeting. There are a few nice things coming up in the next couple of weeks. One will be a free day when the group goes out for miniature golf, and another which is almost like a "free" day in that we’ll have a staff appreciation day. It gives us a chance to meet more personally with Sr. Tess, then we’ll all go out and get a few items from the teacher’s store, and then we’ll end an early day being taken out for lunch! YAYYYY! Usually, means I’m going to be eating real steak and shrimp!!!

I have arranged next weekend to be spending time with two of the boys. I’ll meet jacob for lunch and a good talk on Saturday, and macadam and his family for a brunch on Sunday. I am looking very forward to this time, especially since I won’t be having homework, so it will be guilt-free!!!

Although Dr. M. And V. Are both at meetings out of town right now, we are feeling pretty stable ... Lots of time spent getting papers accomplished after having lost that one week. We’re getting there though. I hope to be writing in this journal over those couple of weeks off. The next courses start October 3rd. I will want to start some of that course work a weekend ahead of time, because I didn’t last time and stayed for a whole semester about a week behind myself. Yeeks don’t want to try that again.

I figure I have a whole ½ hour now to do whatever I want. YAYYYYYY! I already finished one paper this morning, made my comments, and figure that since I reserved all of my time from here til midnight tomorrow in getting the next paper done, I have time to burn. Although, I have to admit, I am most interested now in thinking over the development of this last paper.

Basically, the task is to write about what we’ve learned after a long semester of Lifespan psychology as it is integrated into our profession. All along, we’ve been writing conclusionary paragraphs as to the work either sublimating thoughts of our development or that of the clients at work. But, as of now, we are thinking it would be nice to review the work, while pushing ahead as to the work we would like to do in the future. There is a teensy problem in that we have not really thought of this. But, that is exciting, because we love to figure things out, especially, in psychology.

My first thoughts as to the work that lies ahead of me five years down the line is to be writing programs for adults with developmental disabilities that include individualism and self-determination. I would love to get self-regulation in here too, as to I believe this is going to heavily influence the work I do, but at this point I’m about 1200 pages from making sense out of all that!

So, how do I frame this developmentally? My first thoughts are that the clients I will be working with are entirely adults, but developmentally scan the age ranges included in Lifespan thinking. I spent a semester following pretty closely the material in the textbook. I would now like to integrate it a bit. When I think of writing programs I see in front of me the options of textbook/workbook and computer. Hmm, have to pause here to think. This is where things are going to become constructive!

Maybe the thing to do would be to write several sections ... in a sense, plan the project around Erikson’s developmental stages. Hmm, it be interesting to develop a program as the textbook, we’ve been using divides things up. Where Erikson has 8 stages, there are 14 chapters in the book, because it takes more time with middle childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood, because there are so many things going on in those areas, especially in relationships. The situation with mental retardation is that most the clients I’m working with fall into those areas. There are too, younger than this and older than this. The point of my project would be to include the whole lifespan and sell it as a project. I’ve never seen anything utilizing psychological processes in the market.

next thought, is how can I work these issues to become learning modules? For example, if one important life span construct is to develop attachment, then what would I have the client learning through a developmental workbook or computer program? Let me think. I think we would be looking for this kind of work as it relates to day-training. Just in the state of Illinois, there are 60,000 adults being treated in adult day training centers like ours. This is the population, I would be aiming for. It would seem logical then that the attachment figures we would be looking at are between either the client and the staff, or the client and his peers. One of the first things we would have to do as an attachment step would be to establish trusting relationships. This would mean particularly the staff would need to provide for the needs of the client. Hmm, since we are operating out of the client’s independence. Maybe we would have to concentrate on him or her providing for their needs with only staff assistance. They would need then to learn staff is trustworthy in this position. How could I then establish a goal in this regard?

Thinking of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. This would mean starting with physiological needs, safety needs, belongingness & Love needs, Esteem Needs, Needs to know & Understand, Aesthetic Needs, Self-Actualization, than Transcendence. Whoo! Tall order!!! Hehehe, Maybe we could work on just some of the basic needs! It wouldn’t be difficult to come up with physiological Goals. It sure be an interesting project to list specific development physiological steps from the lowest functioning client to the highest. Hmm, WoW!!! What a thought! What happened if we could cross-reference Maslow with Erikson? That would mean working with eight levels of functioning each on the level of physiological needs, because they would be different if you were one year old or younger (developmentally speaking) from when you were 3 or 6, or 12 or 20 years of age. AHA!!! We’ve got something interesting happening here! Alas, my fun time is over :( Need to be getting to work. AHA!! There is car time! That’s always a slendific time to ponder! YAYYYYYY!

Be taking care!