My Favorite Moment

This has been a rather hard week in the sense that I'm rather sleep deprived and I've had to deal with alot of discipline issues. After getting done with work on Wed I made the comment to a friend that if I never have to deal with another child's temper tantrum in this life it will still be too soon. I think part of it had to do with the weather change. Who knew going from days on end of rain to bright, beautiful, sunny days would be so hard?

In light of the fact that I spend the majority of my day with children who are extremely demanding of my time and energy, some people (including myself sometimes) wonder why I do what I do. Here's the reason: Jayden's moment. Now you're probably wondering who Jayden is. Jayden is a first grader who lives in the projects of Nyack. You can often see him breakdancing in line as we walk down the hall. EVERYBODY knows Jayden. He's developing his knack at being a pick-pocket (though he's gotten caught several times) and has been known to try to figure out how to get into a locked car. It is very important to keep an eye on Jayden at all times during recess for that reason. We believe that Jayden suffers from MR though. He has a hard time remembering concepts like colors, letters, and numbers. In fact, counting is an issue because he doesn't always start at one....let alone go in order after that.

Yesterday we were playing Chutes and Ladders (the other reason I love my job is cause I can spend my afternoons playing board games) and it was Jayden's turn. He spun the spinner and landed on 6. I asked him what number he landed on, anticipating that he'd just guess. He told me it was a 6. I then assumed that it was a lucky guess, but congratulated him anyway on getting the correct answer. Then I asked him to count to six. Normally this process is (1) Jayden counting his way (2) me showing him how to count (3) Jayden trying to count like I do, but unsuccesfully and (4) us counting correctly together. Yesterday, however, Jayden counted to 6 ALL BY HIMSELF! He was actually able to correctly identify the number 6 independently and count from 1-6 correctly on his own several times during the game. It was seriously the highlight of my week.

You should have seen his smile. I wish I had my camera because these are the moments that I love.