Halloween

I admit, I am not a fan of this day, and I feel it every single year. I am not interested in dressing up or opening my door to trick-or-treaters. I am just not interested in much of this at all. I thought about doing a costume, but I just haven't done anything for the parade this afternoon. I am supposed to get something to hand out to my students, but I am not sure that I will. Communication about things does not often get through to the people that need to know the information.

Also, the week of Halloween is always a rough week in education, and throw in many layers of diagnoses and things get so much more complex.

There are things that will happen, and we have some who are forgetting that our students do not have any good concept of cause and effect and do not respond well to threats of taking things away based on behavior choices. So, there have been so many tantrums over statements like, "You haven't earned the Halloween party," and "You just lost your Halloween party." That leads to screaming in the music therapy room and me having to deal with emotions and behaviors that are not my responsibility. I, though, feel that my primary job is to work with the clients that I have no matter what emotions they bring with them, so I start the mood vectoring process.

This week is also a lost week when it comes to much learning. There is so much going on in the brains and bodies of our students that we don't really have much remembering happening. So, these last two days of sessions are dance party days.

Adding to the rest of it all, there is a bad virus circulating and the weather is changing from cold to hot and back to cold. Today will be a colder day than it has been lately, and we had some pretty severe storms last night (from what I hear - I slept through most of them).

So, I will be heading to work in a colder atmosphere, costume-less, and planning on doing the exact same things that I have been doing all week. I try not to add to the Halloween hype in my sessions, but I also don't ignore it. I try to make music therapy a place where we can work on calming our emotions and expressing some of our energy during times before holidays. IT seems to serve my clients and my co-workers the best to have low demand sessions. We can then focus on expressing our emotions rather than just having them.

I am going to take my time this morning and go in later than usual. There is nothing pressing that I have to do other than my documentation, three groups, and the parade this afternoon. I have already turned off my light so it should be a quiet night - I do not know of any kids in my loop, so I doubt that there will be any doorbells ringing at my house. For now, I am going to finish blogging and watching Agatha All Along before I head out to work.'

Halloween.

It will all be over tomorrow. See you then?