Let Me Introduce Tatyana
Hesed Classroom visit
October 2007
Tatyana, social worker and staff
This petite, long dark haired, hyper vigilant girl is 24 months of age This child needs comfort and relaxed physical and emotional activities: mother will be the child’s coach, as she encourages her child to show affection and relate to her face and her body with hugs and touches. This petite girl needs to recognize toys and start to speak and name the toys with help from adults. She needs to examine and manipulate play objects. Mother’s job is to learn child management skills with the help of the staff, by writing down the activities and looking at them often during the play session.
Description of child: a petite, pretty girl, she is highly energetic, uncooperative, distracted and does not attend to toys on the floor, friendly voices or other children; she does not attend to play toys, regardless of what is placed in front of her. This child is in constant motion; she walks over people and toys as if they are invisible, traveling around the room, picking up toys and throwing them aimlessly. The child is attracted to high cabinets, tall tables, crawling and falling, then hiding under tables. She does not say words or listen to commands or respond to staff as they try to control her activity. The child does not interact with other children.
Suggestions: child’s mother will “coach” her, by using firm commands and repeating them, saying, “come here” “sit,” “give me the toy” or “put your hands down.” Several times a day, her mother selects two of the same type of toys from either the activity box at home or at school, such as a car and truck, or baby doll and bottle, and arrange the play toys in a circle. The mother holds the child by the shoulders gently and helps the girl go around the circle, touching toys, and moving around the circle with toys.
This circle of toys is called closed loop floor play. This is the only type of interaction that the high energy child is permitted to do until she recognizes the toys and makes gestures and sounds that show that she is aware that these objects are play toys. Mother will praise her and hold her body closes for frequent periods of time. If she tries to wander away, gently hold her shoulders and sing to her, guiding her hands back to holding toys and relaxing. The child’s actions need to be matched by the mother so they move together, like a dance.
At home, child’s mother does these same activities until the child feels secure enough to touch and play with toys while sitting between her mother’s legs. Mother tries to keep her child between her legs for one minute, then two and three minutes of closed loop floor play has passed. Mother‘s job is to make her child feel comfortable.
The observer notes that when she returns in April, the girl will be ready for group play that helps her and her mother understand the meaning of play.
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